I get knocked down but I get up again - you're never going to keep me down.

[Lalwendë]

Warning some spoilers within...

Originally Posted by Lush

The modern horror film genre, however, appears to use "apparent death" episodes more so on the evil characters than the good. Of course, it's very nice when a good guy (like Dewey in "Scream," if anybody knows what I mean) who has seemingly died comes back in the end. But overall, the most powerful moments are those when you believe the monster/psycho killer/evil witch/etc. to be dead, and then they suddenly spring back up to life again. It's like a demonic reversal of the Resurrection, a cross turned upside down (if you don't mind me using Christianity as a prop here).

I don't see Tolkien doing this. I do not believe he uses "apparent death" as a means of shocking the reader. Or does he?

Good point. The use of the bad guy coming back 'to getcha' has gone beyond cliche. I now watch horror films/thrillers fully expecting that to happen. It gives the hero another go at the baddie, just to underline his/her machismo. So much so that I remember ruining Dead Calm for some friends by laughing at the end and yelling "Hey suckers!" . The more shocking horror films these days seem to be the ones where they do all die at the end, and that's a growing trend. The 28 Days Later DVD comes packaged with two endings, one of which has the hero die. There was also Terminator 3 which does see the machines rise.

Tolkien's most shocking moments are the real deaths. I can't be alone in being struck by the death of Boromir, I know a lot of us will have drawn pictures of that scene! I was also deeply upset by the death of Theoden and the deaths of the Hobbits at the battle of Bywater. But I suppose that the apparent death and rebirth of Gandalf was a big shock too.

The only mistake as far as I'm concerned with what Tolkien did in LOTR is that I'd have liked to have seen more Elves 'die'. Really. It would make a particularly poignant point. But then one small part of me thinks that at the end, when they leave for Valinor, they might as well be dead. I often think of what a modern cynic, placed in Middle-earth would think when Sam or Aragorn spoke of the passing of the ship into the West; they'd be thinking that the reality was that the ship was lost at sea. Maybe Tolkien thought of this too, and when he chose to explain his mistake over Glorfindel within the context of Arda, he also used it to his advantage as an example of 'proof' that Valinor really does exist.

A bit rambling, but there you go.