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Lord of the Rings Is not “Low Magic”

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There is an argument I have often seen bandied about that Lord of the Rings is a “low magic” setting. It probably comes up elsewhere, but I often see it brought up in regards to Lord of the Rings Online. In particular it is at the centre of the unending controversy over the game’s rune-keeper class, which is essentially a mage.

The Fellowship of the RingI am a lifelong Lord of the Rings fan who has read the books and watched the movies more times than I can count, and I am completely baffled by this belief in a non-magical Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings isn’t low magic. Lord of the Rings is dripping in magic.

Magic is everywhere in Middle-Earth. Before the Hobbits even make it to Bree in the Fellowship of the Ring, they encounter evil psychic trees, are saved by an immortal nature spirit, spend the night in his enchanted home, get bewitched by evil ghosts, and steal a bunch of magic blades from them. And all that is just a tangent the movies didn’t even bother to cover.

Also in the Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a scene where Gandalf basically blows up a small hill just to chase off some wolves. Saruman calls forth incredible storms to drive the Fellowship back from Caradhras. Glorfindel (or Arwen in the movie) is able to drive off the Nazgul by unleashing the inherent power of Rivendell.

The Mirror of Galadriel. The Light of Earendil. Sting. Ent-draughts. It just keeps going. The Elves were so suffused with magic that the mere touch of anything wrought by their hands caused Gollum excruciating pain. And did you think that the Lorien cloaks kept their wearers so well hidden just through clever stitching? That a few bites of lembas a day can sustain a person for weeks simply because the Elves are good bakers?

Art of Gandalf battling the Baelrog in Lord of the RingsThe counter to all this might be that these examples all involve very special people. Gandalf, Saruman, and the Elves are immortals with abilities far beyond that of mere humans. Magic is out of reach of the ordinary person in Middle-Earth.

Is it, though?

Aragorn is mortal, yet his mastery of healing quite clearly comes from more than a simple knowledge of herbs and medicine. The Oathbreakers were cursed to undeath by Isildur, then commanded and subsequently released by Aragorn. Most tellingly, the Mouth of Sauron, a mortal man, is said to have learned great sorcery from the Dark Lord himself. This shows magic can be taught in Lord of the Rings.

Now these are Numenoreans and therefore still a bit beyond your garden variety human. But there are other examples.

Even Samwise Gamgee, a simple Hobbit gardener, is able to make hardened Orcs flinch before him simply by shouting a few Elvish phrases. He’s able to regrow the trees of the Shire using naught but a small pouch of soil from Lorien.

Even the humblest resident of Middle-Earth is therefore capable of wielding some degree of supernatural power, and one can imagine someone with more time and inclination to study ancient lore and seek out objects of power could accomplish quite a lot. Perhaps they might not equal Gandalf in power, but still…

The Necromancer reveals himself in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five ArmiesConsider, also, that for a time Sauron masqueraded as “the Necromancer of Mirkwood.” Necromancers had to be a relatively common thing for him to not be immediately identified as his true self.

Although we don’t see a lot of mortal magic-wielders in Lord of the Rings, it is my opinion that they certainly could have existed, and probably did in some number. To get back to LotRO, then, I see nothing wrong with the rune-keeper.

Magic is everywhere in Lord of the Rings, so where did this perception that’s it’s a low magic setting come from?

I don’t know. Fanon is a strange thing at the best of times, and this is definitely one of the weirder examples I’ve seen in my time, all the more so for how widespread the misconception has become.

The one explanation I can come up with is perhaps it has to do with the fact magic in Lord of the Rings tends to be less visually flashy than you see in other settings. Magic in Tolkien’s universe tends to be more often about influencing minds and emotions than about flinging fireballs and lightning bolts. The magic is very common and very powerful, but it is subtle, so maybe that’s how people have come to dismiss it.

The poster for the Fellowship of the Ring movieI can especially see this being the case for people who are more familiar with the movies than the books. The medium of film cannot easily convey things like how the heart is seized with unnatural terror in the presence of the Nazgul, or the serenity that can be bestowed by the Elves and their works.

Even then, though, there are still plenty of more dramatic examples of magic in Lord of the Rings, so it still doesn’t make much sense.

It is a great mystery. How have people convinced themselves the story that created the high fantasy genre is not high fantasy?

Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

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I’ve been pretty harshly critical of the Harry Potter films over the years. Mostly they’re adequate at best, and just bad at worst. However, I maintained a minimal interest in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them spin-off. My logic was that with nothing to compare it to, there was less potential for disappointment.

Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander in Fanatstic Beasts and Where to Find ThemEven so, I wasn’t expecting a lot. I went in anticipating a popcorn movie with some pretty special effects, and no more.

Boy was I off.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them turned out to be a far deeper, more mature, and more powerful story than I expected.

Fantastic Beasts begins with Newt Scamander, author of the book the film is named for, as he arrives in New York with an enchanted trunk full of magical creatures. This is a rather illegal thing to do, given the American wizarding government thinks rather poorly of fantastical creatures and general prefers to hunt them rather than preserve them.

And it doesn’t take long for him to run into trouble. When several of his creatures break free, Newt runs afoul of disgraced auror Tina Goldstein, who apprehends him for endangering the secrecy of magic. Along the way, he also becomes entangled with Tina’s sister, a boisterous mind-reader named Queenie, and Jacob Kowalski, a local muggle (or “no-maj” as the Americans like to call them) who has seen far too much.

Newt’s mishaps couldn’t have come at a worse time, either, as a string of magical calamities throughout New York have inflamed the already high tensions between the magical and mundane worlds. It doesn’t take long for the authorities to blame Newt and his animals, but he knows they can’t be to blame, and he and his newfound allies must work fast to recapture them and prove their innocence.

The cast of Fanatstic Beasts and Where to Find ThemIf I have a complaint about Fantastic Beasts, it’s that there’s this weird disconnect between the whacky and whimsical quest to wrangle Newt’s critters and the surprisingly intense geopolitical/magical concerns that end up forming the real meat of the story. It’s sort of two movies at once, and the one it advertised itself — the one about Newt and his animals — is a lot less interesting than the other one.

Similarly, Newt himself is kind of weak compared to Tina’s pure-hearted determination, Jacob’s humble lovability, and Queenie’s flirtatious charm.

There is something to be said for a hero who solves problems with knowledge, understanding, and compassion rather than brute force, and intellectually I appreciate what Newt represents, but the fact is he just doesn’t have the charisma or charm of the rest of the cast.

Come to think of it, this is kind of a hallmark of J.K. Rowling’s work. Harry himself was one of the least interesting characters in the Harry Potter books. Even in the Cormoran Strike novels, I like Robin and Shanker a lot more than I like Cormoran.

But I said Fantastic Beasts is like two movies at once, and it’s the other one, the one about the friction between magic and mundane in New York, that’s special.

What really impressed me about Fantastic Beasts is how incredibly heavy a lot of the themes it deals with are: segregation, conservation, religious extremism, child abuse, bigotry and what it does to people.

Newt Scamander and one of his animals in Fanatstic Beasts and Where to Find ThemIn retrospect, I maybe shouldn’t be surprised. I’m always telling people how smart and mature the Harry Potter books are. I just didn’t expect Fantastic Beasts to follow in that tradition.

Part of it is probably down to the fact I didn’t follow the movie’s production very closely. I was of the impression J.K. Rowling had simply tossed out some general ideas and then gone home to cash her cheque while the movie studio did the rest. I didn’t realize she’d written the entire screenplay herself. That explains a lot.

I want to be even more careful with spoilers than I usually am here because I think Fantastic Beasts is one of those stories that’s much better if you go in fresh and watch it evolve naturally. I will say that it’s a very powerful movie, and that what the threat actually turns out to be is both conceptually brilliant and genuinely terrifying.

I also think the villain of this series has the potential to be much more interesting than Voldemort was. Not so much due to anything inherent to the character as the way the series is showing the rough edges of where the magical and mundane worlds meet in Rowling’s universe. Voldemort just felt evil for evil’s sake, but this character reminds me more of X-Men’s Magneto — someone with legitimate anger over the world’s injustices who has taken that anger too far.

The ending of the film is a little underwhelming in some ways — it’s what we in my family liked to call a “Voyager Ending” in honour of Star Trek: Voyager’s ability to always resolve any crisis in the last five minutes, logic be damned. But it’s not enough to spoil an otherwise excellent experience.

Overall rating: 8.9/10 Vastly better than I expected.

Also, now I’ve dug out my copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to read more about the critters in the movie.