#iirc the shire isn’t very mountainous

[bumblingbriars]

Y’know because hobbits have smiths and often name their noble women after gems I’ve been wondering where they get these jewels. Trading? Do they have their own mines? Does anyone have answers lol

[paradoxcase]

Moria thoughts (I’m up to just before the discovery of Balin’s tomb):

In the movie, after establishing that Saruman is purposefully forcing them to abandon the idea of going over Caradhras and thus having to go through Moria as Gimli suggests, Saruman gives this like, evil villain speech about Gandalf is super afraid to go through Moria because of the Balrog, which I think is supposed to foreshadow Gandalf not making it out of Moria.  But in the books, Gimli doesn’t mention Moria at first, and actually it was Gandalf’s idea to go that way, even without trying Caradhras at all.  They only try Caradhras because Gandalf and Aragorn had been arguing about this and Gandalf finally agreed with Aragorn that they would try Caradhras first before going through Moria, and then when Caradhras doesn’t work out, Gandalf is like, look guys, I’ve been through Moria before, it’s really not that bad, trust me, also there are a whole bunch of evil werewolves/wargs around here and we probably don’t want to continue going overland with them chasing us (they do actually have to fight off some werewolves the night before they go into Moria, which honestly I can’t imagine why Peter Jackson would have cut that scene because it’s exactly the sort of stuff he loves).  Anyway, I feel like inserting Gimli into this conversation and making Gandalf actually averse to going through Moria removes the last tiny little bit of Gandalf and Aragorn’s relationship that we might have seen in the movie, which is just a shame.  We also miss the actual foreshadowing that Tolkien does, where Aragorn keeps making dark predictions about how Gandalf won’t survive Moria and how he, personally, is going to wind up regretting going this way and etc., which is IMO much better than just having Saruman say “muhahaha my evil plan to make them go through Moria has worked!” which was honestly kind of dumb.  There is a note about Tolkien calling Moria a “trap” but it’s not really clear if he actually meant that someone was really forcing them to go through it and face that danger.  There’s even a note in the companion that it’s not clear if Gandalf actually knew what Durin’s Bane even was before meeting the Balrog.  There’s a nice little moment after they get locked into Moria by the Watcher where the hobbits are scared and Aragorn is like, don’t worry, Gandalf will definitely be able to lead us out of here, I’ve known him a long time and he’s very good at this, in spite of all of his dire predictions earlier.  Another little bit of their relationship that wasn’t included in the movie.

For the Pippin-is-stupid record: It was Boromir and not Pippin who threw a rock into the Watcher’s pool, and he did it because he was frustrated, not because ooh, I’m bored, it’s fun to throw rocks.  But Pippin did throw the rock down the well in Moria, and it was more or less because he wanted to see what would happen.  Pippin admittedly isn’t smart all the time.  However, he did not actually send an entire skeleton connected to a big clanking chain down there, it was just a rock.

Gimli has a very nice poem/song about Durin in Moria which obviously didn’t make it into the movie.  I realize they can’t put all the songs in the movie, but I would have liked to see this one!  I remember they did put in, IIRC one of Bilbo’s songs when Pippin sang it to Denethor, and they included the dwarves’ song in the Hobbit.

If you’re like me and always wondered how Gollum could possibly have followed them into Moria when they entered the way they did, it turns out that Gollum actually entered from the east quite a long time before the Fellowship entered from the west and had only just found his way to the west exit when the Fellowship entered there (and then the west exit was blocked by the Watcher).  After Gollum escaped from Thranduil, he was being chased by both angry Elves and and angry Orcs, so he actually entered Moria in order to hide from them, with the sort of vague plan of trying to get to the Shire when he came out, since he knew it was west of the Misty Mountains.  Then he got lost, and, I suppose, was following the Fellowship just in order to find the way out again.  He may or may not have actually known that the ring-bearer was part of the Fellowship at this point.