Middle Earth snark

December 22, 2004 4:53 PM

Fraud of the Rings LOTR cartoon satire...My favorite.
posted by konolia (28 comments total)

Heh. Reminds me of Bored of the Rings.
posted by Specklet at 5:03 PM on December 22, 2004

Wow, that's nerdy!

Does anyone remember Bored of the Rings?
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:04 PM on December 22, 2004

Heh.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:05 PM on December 22, 2004

What I wanna know is whether Matt Groening knows John Cook is plagierizing his cartoon stylings?
posted by Doohickie at 5:38 PM on December 22, 2004

I watched BBC's Massive Nature documentary season the other day. The first one was particularly awesome, involving schools of sardine off the coast of Africa following their foodsource, eventually becoming a super-school of megabijillions of fish, which in turn attact super-pods of thousands of dolphins that work together to trap and eat the fish; plus large groups of sharks, sea lions, and gulls. A big, big event.

The commentary for all six episodes are very similar.

And it suddenly struck me during one episode that a fellow could have a blast remixing Lord of the Rings as a Massive Nature episode.

Orcs. Fourteen million Sauruman-bred Orcs. This is the biggest mob of Orcs Middle Earth has ever seen. Today, all fourteen million leave Sauruman's realm in one mass exodus. It's the biggest day of their lives. But for some, it will be their last. Because outside lurk deadly predators. [freeze frame matrix-style image of Orc about to encounter an arrow]
So, who will live and who will die? At the moment of impact, what are the odds for each Orc in the horde? Unlucky Orcs may become unwitting Elf-fodder. Every Orc is a potential target - so is there anywhere in the crowd that is safe from attack? In a mob of millions, is life and death simply a lottery, or are can an Orc do anything to increase its chance of survival? To find out, we're going to travel back five months, when [special zoom effect] this cave stood empty.
Our story begins hundreds of miles from the scene of battle: Sauruman's breeding caves...

And so on. All read in Sean Pertwee's impeccable British accent.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:51 PM on December 22, 2004

the guy needs to find his own style.
posted by delmoi at 6:03 PM on December 22, 2004

Huhn. Before clicking the link, I thought this post was going to be all about this.
posted by ShawnStruck at 6:14 PM on December 22, 2004

q.v. Waiting for Frodo.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:23 PM on December 22, 2004

that's awesome, ....man i'm a dork.
posted by NGnerd at 7:02 PM on December 22, 2004

I like the Humphrey Bogart version the best.

Definitely worth downloading--great piece of work.
posted by First Post at 7:03 PM on December 22, 2004

BWAHAHAHAHA! First Post?!?! What a username. Awesome. That oughtta get under the skin of some of the old timers! Hehe.

Anyway, five fresh fish.... your post reminds me of the Montey Python Pantomime Horse routine: "And here we have two Pantomime Horses in a life and death struggle..."
posted by Doohickie at 7:12 PM on December 22, 2004

If there's one thing worse than Lord of the Rings, it's parodies of Lord of the Rings.
posted by reklaw at 7:37 PM on December 22, 2004

"Fraud of the Rings seems to divide readers into two camps - Tolkien purists who consider it an affront to the books and movies and those who actually have a sense of humor :-) "

Tee-hee-hee. And then there are those who are not Tolkien purists, and enjoy well-done Tolkien parodies, and realize this is shit.

Yes, I remember Bored of the Rings quite well, and this "parody" isn't qualified to carry its lunch.

Sorry -- not funny. And it doesn't get more tired than this.
posted by ticopelp at 7:45 PM on December 22, 2004

Maybe I'm just being a retard, but is there a way to view all the LOTR cartoons in a row, without having to go back and forth to the links page.

Each time I hit the next button, I get some random other dorky cartoon by this guy.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 7:55 PM on December 22, 2004

I believe these occupy the same cultural ladder rung as Redneck Christmas Classics (with favorites such as "Santa Got a D.W.I.").
posted by dhartung at 8:24 PM on December 22, 2004

NERD WARNING.




It's 'Saruman,' not 'Sauruman.'


somebody shoot me now, please, I beg you.


I wouldn't call myself a purist, per se, but I've been reading the books since I was 10. I like good LOTR humour; that is, LOTR parodies and satires that are done with obvious intelligence. The Secret Diaries of the Fellowship of the Ring, for example, or that messageboard that had people doing LOTR as written by various different authors. The Dr. Seuss version was particularly sublime, as were the Hunter Thompson and Douglas Adams ones.

The best, though, for brevity and extreme meta-mocking:

"Elvish, motherfucker. Do you speak it?"
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:56 PM on December 22, 2004

BWAHAHAHAHA! First Post?!?! What a username. Awesome. That oughtta get under the skin of some of the old timers! Hehe.

Ha, thanks. Certainly not my intent, but with things the way they've been, who knows :)

(disclaimer: have read the site for years blah blah blah)
posted by First Post at 10:36 PM on December 22, 2004

What ticopelp said. I love a good parody. This is not good parody. There's no humor here at all. Except maybe in reading the comments and taking bets on whether the author wrote those too -- they have that feel about them.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:45 PM on December 22, 2004

I think these are good. And yes, I spent 12 hours watching the entire extended epic the other day. All 12 hours,11 mintutes and 34 seconds of it.

Good stuff, IMHO.
posted by wah at 11:27 PM on December 22, 2004

haha! i was googling for the site with the hunter s. thompson LOTR parody (as mentioned by dirtynumbangelboy) and i found this quote on a russian lord of the rings site:

"Could anybody tell me why so much of Tolkien humor in English is related to computers?"
posted by pikachulolita at 11:43 PM on December 22, 2004

I'm in the 'these just aren't funny' camp, I'm afraid. The 'jokes', such as they are, failed to raise as much as a smile from me. And I consider myself easily amused.

Plus I had the same problem navigating the site as PissOnYourParade.
posted by MrMustard at 2:03 AM on December 23, 2004

I feel obliged to mention that if you're british (I'm not) Lord and Fraud rhyme.
posted by Tlogmer at 3:53 AM on December 23, 2004

Previously linked:
Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer, 2002, for The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD, Part One
Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer, 2002, for The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD, Part Two

Chomsky: Naturally, it's in Rohan/Gondor's interest to keep the Orcs obscured, to make everything as restricted and dehumanizing as possible. It's always the first step toward genocide. And is this — is there anything less than genocide being advocated in this film?

Zinn: I don't think so.

From McSweeney's
posted by Ritchie at 5:11 AM on December 23, 2004

Only because wah added another "pro" vote, I feel compelled to add my astoundingly original observations that:

1) This is lame.
2) The cartooning is an obvious lame ripoff of Matt Groening.

That is all. Thank you.
posted by soyjoy at 8:12 AM on December 23, 2004

Two late hits:

I had not heard of the "Elvish, motherfucker,..." before dirtynumbangelboy's reference in his last sentence, but this enhances the joke. I'm still giggling.

And since I share dirtynumbangelboy's sense of humor, I vote with the 'original link is shite' contingent. But parody is hard, even Bored of the Rings was only intermittently funny.
posted by mojohand at 1:17 PM on December 23, 2004

Woo! Look at me! I'm a CARTOONIST!


posted by filmgoerjuan at 1:32 PM on December 23, 2004

oh my. LOTR is always a laugh!
posted by dickumbrage at 5:16 PM on December 25, 2004

I find the McSweeney's link mentioned to by Ritchie to be much much funnier:

Chomsky: But we will address that later. Here we have Pippin and Merry stealing a bunch of fireworks and setting them off. This might be closer to the true heart of the Hobbits.

Zinn: You mean the Hobbits' natural inclination?

Chomsky: I think the Hobbits are criminals, essentially.

posted by kreinsch at 1:51 PM on December 29, 2004