One of the most upvoted posts on Reddit today is a link to Samwise Gamgee’s speech to Frodo from The Two Towers. In it, Frodo is despairing. He’s over this “destroy the ring” shit. Sam, looking out from the ruined city of Osgiliath into a Jacksonian green-gray sky, says, in part:
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Sam says those storybook characters kept going because they were holding onto something, and when Frodo asks him what that was, Sam drops the hammer:
That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo … and it’s worth fighting for.
The appeal of this dose of cinematic optimism is probably not too hard to guess, although, rather than devolving into a political slap fight, the Reddit commenters start bickering instead over the best fan edit of The Hobbit. (Apparently the Maple Films version restores the Arkenstone story arc.) Over on YouTube, commenters were more direct in their connections to current events. Here’s the top comment:You can watch the whole speech below, which is eagerly awaiting your own political interpretation.
[Source:-AV Club]
