Parihaka

Yeah, quite possibly, IIRC the Corsairs were 'fallen men of Númenor' who had mixed with the Haradrim, Aragorn sacked the city as a youth and destroyed their great ships, leading a detachment of the men of Gondor.

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In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
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xerxes

Pari, I dont know if you had this post that I made back before ,,, it is in regards to the Witchking of Angmar and the siege of Gondor

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JRR Tolkein ultimately based the begining of the seige of Gondor as the siege of Constantinople by the Mehmed the Second, while he based the conclusion of seige of Gondor as the siege of Vienna by the Turks under the sceptre of the grand vizier in 1683 (?), and the rout of the Turkish host.

In fact the scene where the witchking is sitting upon his black horse with an iron mace directing the battle is described by Edward Gibbsons's (the history of the decline and fall of roman empire), as Mehmed the Second with an iron mace seating upon a black horse and commanding the war effort with every gesture of his body movements. It is right out of Edward Gibbsons's book.

Tolkein took a lot of stuff from the Ottomans and the West as whole. Also, although, the Turks didnt use elephants, the Enemy in Middle Earth used elephant of the Haradrim probably based on the armies of Shahpur II of the Sassanides which had large number of Indian elephants. The shape of the mountain surrounding the Land of Morder looks a lot like today's Turkey, where the Black Gate in where the Golden Horne is.

Gondor - the south kingdom - and Arnor - the north kingdom - represent the West and Eastern Roman Empire. Where the West has fallen by the time of the siege of Constantinople, whereas equally the Arnor - the north kingdom - has fallen by the time of the siege of Gondor. The double cities of Minas Arnor (Tirith) and Minas Ithil (Morgul), represent Constantinople before and after its fall to the Mehmed the Second.

Generally, the East is the combination of Turks, Persians, Corsairs and Indians where the West is the the West, with Hobbiton representing the English folk, and the Arnor and Gondor as the once mighty Roman Empires. The Rohan represent the Scandanavian folks from the north.

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Low-tech

there is heavy scandinavian folklore/myth in tolkiens writing.

the whole "elves,dwarves,hobbits,trolls" kind of thing, comes directly from scandinavian fairytales and such.

i believe tolkien studied mythology and was fluent in some scandinavian languages.

xerxes, its a good observation that alot of the events and battles in LOTR could be references to different sieges and battles in history, it never occured to me, but like in the dune saga.....which was inspired by events in sudan, could very well be.....probably is.

with dune the metaphor is unmistakible..........spice=oil.

xerxes

In case of Dune.

If Mu'adib's fremen were to represent the Mahdi army in Sudden, I wonder if the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV is to be Lord Kitchner and Churchill as Count Fenring. Though, it is also like the Arab invasion of Persia, notice in Dune how the the Emperor of the Known Universe has a Persian title - Padishah - which stands for the Great King or Emperor. Those events in the book also represent the spread of Islam into the world as a fire-religion. Remember the reference of the armies of Fremen drunk on Spice. The pompous Royal Court of Shaddam IV, is the pompous Royal Court at Ctisphone which could not weather the coming storm. Of the other Dune books, I could not find anything.

The Spice in Dune and the desert planet was so cool that even George Lucas stole it for his first Star Wars movie, and he almost got sued for it.

Alamgir

There were about 5 or 6 "Persians" in 300 that had any kind of dialogue. Xerxes was one of them and he looked like a gay Egyptian Pharaoh rather than a Persian King. Thats one down. A further three "Persians" (not) who spoke were played by Black people. There was only one guy in the whole film that looked Persian. The army was made up of deformed looking people, animals, monsters and a few token Oriental people.

The entire movie made a gross misrepresentation of the Persian army and of Xerxes. I wont go as far to say that 300 was 'psychological' warefare on Iran but their portrayal of Persians was in bad taste.

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Officer of Engineers

Think you give the American or even Western public too much credit. Go down any street and I bet you will find less than 10 people out of 100 who knows Iran is Persia and fewer still who knew the Medes were Persians. Now, if they had called it Iranistan ...

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Chimo

T_igger_cs_30

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dalem

Ahh I see. I tend to associate the Corsairs with the actual ships in my head and not the pirates because when I first read it as a kid I didn't know what a Corsair was, and all Tolkien told me about was the ships themselves. but clearly you are correct - he didn't bring the Corsairs themselves, just their ships.

-dale

dalem

Many of those scenes are frame-for-page copies of the graphic novel, so if you're going to blame anyone for goofing up Xerxes' army, go back to 1998 and blame Frank Miller, not the guys who did the movie.

-dale

Low-tech

thats the thing about this movie<which i havent seen yet>, its being conflated with political sentiments.......negative ones.

the comic from which its based predates current tensions with iran, but, we must understand that the actual story was just a context for a bunch of crazy, epic war scenes for a comic artist. so what you are seeing is not the same bush "axis of evil" anti-iranian sentiment.

comics are very different than television and movies, mainstream comics exist outside of political agendas and influence...............so theres no right wing conspiracy here from frank miller and whatever publisher he was working under.

so we are talking about a medium thats selling point is stuff film couldnt reproduce effectively the last 50 years when it comes to war, when it comes to the fantasy outer-space,dimension,time kind of thing. comics dont adhere to the same institutional agenda of super sensitive political correctness and most publishers keep the material out of the realm of serious political undertones.......mainly because the viewership is so young..........and that viewership is more interested in impossibly proportioned heros and hot chicks kicking someones but.

at times they are clumsy and stuff like 300 is made where it actually IS offensive, but most of the people who followed the comics of frank miller or the million other artists, for the most part understood that the plot itself is just a mere premise for a bunch of fight scenes and hot chicks and stuff......which is the bread and butter.

dalem

Exactly. As I've said before, it's a movie based on a comic book based on an earlier movie about an epic poem about a battle from a couple of thousand years ago.

You can either enjoy it for what it is or complain for what it's not.

-dale

glyn

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dalem

Oh come on, it's a hoot - lots of greased-up guys shoving spears through each other. Fun stuff.

-dale

Bulgaroctonus

Dale,

Literally, the phrase is Latin for "God out of the machine".

Regards,

Bulgaroctonus

dalem

Thanks! How are ya?

-dale