Published on: 17 Feb 03:22

An esteemed internet schmuck asks

Question for the class: Lord of the Rings is rated PG-13, and as such is allowed one F-bomb. Where would you put it?

My answer

Ha. All these suggestions? Sure, they’re not bad. But there’s one and only one perfect place for the single PG-13 FUCK. Right at the climax of the movie. Sauron has been focusing with all his might at the Black Gate, his Eye fixed on Aragorn and his army. Sauron fears and dreads that Aragorn will usurp and overthrow him, wielding his own damn Ring.

Then Frodo claims the Ring himself.

Just imagine Sauron’s situation: in an instant he goes from the brink of final victory to the brink of ultimate, irreversible defeat. Frodo unmakes everything.

For year after year, decade after decade, Sauron’s forces had multiplied, his military power swelled, and his dark arm could stretch and strike where he pleased. Yet in only a few short months he’d suffered a series of astonishing setbacks. Sauron’s ally/puppet Saruman had unleashed tens of thousands of his new Uruk-Hai against Rohan, yet when he hurled them against the fortress of Hornburg at Helm’s Deep, they broke and routed. Who was in charge there? A random Dunedain ranger called Aragon. Saruman’s fortress of Isengard fell soon after. The Corsairs of Umbar, the finest and fiercest marine raiders of their age, found their navies assailed in turn by this Aragorn chappie, yet too quailed and ran and abandoned their own vessels. Sauron himself had already launched an army of half a million Orcs and Easterlings against Minas Tirith, yet it too lay shattered beneath the walls of the White City. His finest lieutenant, the dreaded Witch-King of Angmar? Destroyed. The Easterlings’ mountain-sized Mumakils? Wrecked to the last beast.

This cannot be! Is there no battle Aragorn can’t win? Is there no army of Sauron’s he can’t annihilate? He’s unstoppable! How? Is Aragorn in possession of some device of vast and dreadful power? Something greatly increasing his leadership, his drive, his force of will?

Isn’t it obvious? Aragorn surely has the Ring. Sauron’s own Ring. Mordor had been throbbing with evil strength, extending its dark arm further and yet further across Middle-Earth, none could stand against him, years passed and then decades, and all challengers quailed against Sauron the Great …

… But in a few short months, this Aragorn has dealt Sauron a series of catastrophic and impossible body blows. He’d unmade every plan, smashed every scheme. Sauron is reeling. How could a Power as obviously Great as Sauron be so thoroughly thrashed? Aragorn must have the Ring. There can be no other explanation.

And now? Aragorn is coming after Sauron directly, confronting him at his own front gates. All Sauron can do is set a trap with every evil soldier still remaining to him. Still hundreds of thousands. Still a vast and terrible army. But should a Ringed Aragorn openly declare his claim and leadership, might they not abandon Sauron and rally to Aragorn?

But what else can Sauron do? He sets his trap, reeking of dread. His armies outnumber Aragorn’s ten times over, and more than ten times over. Yet Aragorn marches his army right into the trap’s steel jaws, cool as you please.

This right here, by the way, is one of the biggest differences between the books and the movies. Movie-Aragorn never intended his march on the Black Gate to be anything other than a simple diversion, to keep Sauron's attentions fixed on him and away from Frodo and Sam and the Ring. Book-Aragorn, however, was deliberately attempting to bluff and fool Sauron into believing he had the Ring. And what better way than to act as though one's powers of leadership and strength of will conferred on one's army ten times, twenty times its regular powers? Otherwise such a gambit would be insane, suicide, appalling folly, leading to a crushing defeat.

Yet he advances nonetheless, surely waiting for the perfect moment to declare himself King Aragorn Elessar, Lord of the Ring. The tension is unbearable. At last Sauron springs the trap, determined to crush Aragorn once and for all—

—And right at the crucial, climactic moment, the cry goes up, the Ring is claimed! It’s happened at last!

Sauron recoils and quails, every dark creature under his dominion recoils and quails. But what’s this? The claimant isn’t Aragorn, the claimant isn’t anywhere near Aragorn, no, the cry instead arises from hundreds of miles away - at Mt. Doom! Some bloody hobbit shouts to all Middle-Earth that the Ring is there, and the Ring is his, and the Ring is at the only location it could be literally unmade.

Aragorn never had the Ring! Aragorn and his armies, Gandalf and his meddling, had never been more than feeble diversions. Not only had he, Sauron the Great, fallen for every ruse and bluff they’d thrown at him, not only does all Middle-Earth now know him a witless, gullible fool, but Aragorn’s impossible victories over Sauron the Great weren’t impossible at all but just regular battles and Sauron had never been even faintly Great.

But, worse still: the Ring lost is humiliation enough, but the Ring destroyed is the ultimate catastrophe! If Sauron or his Nagzul don’t get to Mt. Doom in literally seconds, everything he’d ever built or dreamed of will crash into wreck and ruin.

“FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!”

Source: https://cinemareel.quora.com/https-crabsarepeople-...