[Sauron the White]

You don't like the use of his primary colors so he should just be dumped?

Meriadoc ... you have completely misrepresented my objectionS to Bombadil. Primary colors indeed!!!!!

For your benefit, and in the interests of completeness and debate integrity, I give you again my reasons from an earlier post that you may have either missed or overlooked:

1- The way he is described by JRRT, he simply looks goofy, stupid, dumb, foolish, silly, cartoonish, childish, and just plain funny looking. I cut back on the adjectives because I do not want to come off as mean spirited. Of all the characters JRRT created TB is the absolute worst visually. Films are foremost a visaul medium. What good would it have been to hire people like John Howe and Alan Lee and a host of other artists, illustrators, designers, model makers, and other creative visual talents only to have the absurd figure of TB appear on the same screen? It would be like serving a fabulous six course dinner in a five star restaurant only to have one of the dishes smell of vomit.


2- Tolkien bases his story on the idea of the Ring. What it is, how powerful it is, how it can control everyone who comes in contact with it, how it can tip the fate of the peoples of Middle-earth, and its history. Just when we have bought into the idea that this ring is the be all and end all of the everything, we then get introduced to a character who does not care about the ring, can wear it without being impacted by it in the least, cares nothing for it, and will not do anything to help with the central problem of the ring. Then the story moves on, leaving TB in his version of Disneyland, and nothing more happens with him. It is absolutely pointless.

Others here, defending TB, have said he is a colorful character who adds to the rich tapestry of Middle-earth and shows the wide variety of beings that inhabited it. Any being would fill that role. It does not have to be something which is so visually hideous or so meaningless to the story or plot or its advance or its resolution.

3- If Bombadil would have been hard on the eyes he would have been equally grating on the ears spouting doggerel such as:

"Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo.
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow"

I can hear every comedian on late night TV doing a bit about dongs and dillos from the LOTR films. That would have had the audience either in embarassed titters or outright stitches.

So much for Bombadil.

Allow me to also point out that the negative opinion on Bombadil is not exclusive from the pro-film crowd. There have been other posts, both here and elsewhere, of people who were glad TB was not in the films.