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DarkLord153
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Post The Blue....Wizards
on: March 18, 2017 08:01
Just searched it on the wiki,but,what excactly are the blue wizards?I cant really understand what they are.

Edit: Does anyone know the gmae The Lord Of The Rings The Third Age? If yes,you're god
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NenyaGold
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on: March 18, 2017 08:31
I don't remember any Blue Wizards in the movies... I wonder if this should be in the Books Forum?

In any event, here is a rather definitive description of the Blue Wizards from The Encyclopedia of Arda.

Looks like they weren't very good guys...

"He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring." ~ from The Hobbit
Gandolorin
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on: March 18, 2017 11:04
I'm not sure, but in the Extended Edition of "Return of The King", where "The Voice Of Saruman" is an added scene at the beginning (with Gandalf's confrontation with Saruman at Isengard, breaking of Saruman's staff etc.) Saruman may have said something about Gandalf's gathering all the staffs of all five Wizards - though I don't know if Saruman explicitly mentions the Blue Wizards. And of course, there is the entirely uncanonical death of Saruman at Isengard - if canonically by being stabbed by Gríma Wormtongue, at least.
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Lord_Sauron
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on: March 18, 2017 11:10
In the movie the Hobbit an unexpected journey Gandalf does mention to Bilbo that there are Five Wizards The two Blues who he can't remember their names (Though my opinion was that Peter Jackson wasn't allowed to actually name them because of rights).

Darklord153 The two Blue Wizards Alatar and Pallendo went East with Saruman however they did not return with Saruman. They are mentioned in the book the Unfinished Tales chapter heading The Istari. You can even search the book forum there may be some threads dedicated to the Blue Wizards
NenyaGold
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on: March 19, 2017 01:24
Gandolorin, I just searched for "staff" in all of the movie scripts, including the extended versions, and I didn't find any reference to Gandalf gathering the staffs, but, aha!, there is this quote:

"Saruman: Gibbets and crows? Dotard! What do you want, Gandalf Greyhame? Let me guess. The key of Orthanc. Or perhaps the Keys of Barad-dur itself along with the crowns of the seven kings and the rods of the Five Wizards!"

Here is the original quote from the Return of the King book:

"Saruman's face grew livid, twisted with rage, and a red light was kindled in his eyes. He laughed wildly. 'Later!' he cried, and his voice rose to a scream. 'Later! Yes, when you also have the Keys of Barad-dùr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings. and the rods of the Five Wizards, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those that you wear now."

I thought maybe the use of rods was a PJ deviation... I was wrong...

I could find no reference in the books for Blue Wizards. Unfortunately, I don't have a version of HoMe to search.

"He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring." ~ from The Hobbit
Gandolorin
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on: March 19, 2017 02:39
Thanks, NenyaGold.

So what do we have here, another example of Saruman being ornery and contrarian? I'm certain that whenever Gandalf's wooden thingy is mentioned in the books (except by Saruman), it is called a staff. Granted, Saruman's prop in the movies looks like something finely crafted, compared to Gandalf's straight tree branch - or trunk of a small tree.
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tarcolan
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on: March 19, 2017 02:57
In early drafts of LOTR wizards were counted among the servants of Sauron. Neither rods nor staffs are mentioned in the HoME index. Volume XII has some information about the missing wizards but I haven't got that one.
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Elthir
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on: March 22, 2017 11:41
In the movie the Hobbit an unexpected journey Gandalf does mention to Bilbo that there are Five Wizards The two Blues who he can't remember their names (Though my opinion was that Peter Jackson wasn't allowed to actually name them because of rights).


Technically Jackson had the right to refer to five wizards [The Lord of the Rings], but not any blueness [Unfinished Tales, 1954 Istari essay], although in any case, in a letter written after the essay that included the [sea] blue Istari, in letter 211 Tolkien stated:

"I have not named the colours, because I do not know them. I doubt if they had distinctive colours. Distinction was only required in the case of the three who remained in ..." JRRT, letter 211, 1958


As for their names, we are again in posthumously published waters: two Quenya names appear in one text [Alatar, Pallando], and three more Quenya names appear in a very late, hard to read note [Morinehtar, Romestamo, Romestar]. This scenario might be due to JRRT not being able to find the earlier text, so he invented new names for the later note.

At the moment I can't recall if any of these forms -- again all being Quenya -- were actually supposed to be used by folks in Middle-earth; in other words, whether or not they were intended to be equivalent to Gandalf's Quenya Olorin.

Diacritics aside in some of these names

[Edited on 03/23/2017 by Elthir]
Elthir
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on: March 23, 2017 12:54
To Lord Sauron: the name Ungoliant appears in the books, in Shelob's Lair, so Jackson had the rights to that name [to answer your PM here].

And to sum up, you're right, any names of the "other two" wizards fall outside both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as the detail of the colour sea-blue, so the blueness detail would seem to be off limits as well -- although I'm no lawyer so what do I know -- and the blue idea isn't even necessarily "true" anyway...

... it's a popular notion, yes, but so are overly big-feeted Hobbits, the difference here being that the Istari text explicitly notes the colours (and there's no text that describes Hobbit feet in general as disproportionally large). The Istari text in Unfinished Tales even includes the Sindarin term Ithryn Luin "Blue Wizards"... it's just that these details, which began as an index entry to The Lord of the Rings, were written roughly four years earlier than the letter in which Tolkien says he doubts these wizards had distinctive colours.

And then, so far anyway, I can't find any reference to blue wizards after the 1958 letter. Subsequently they are the "other two" out of five.

Just to note it, I normally prefer the public forums. I'm not annoyed or anything, it's just that I employ PM infrequently, and the topic here is Tolkienian, not Elthirian.

Anyway yes I'll give Jackson Ungoliant... not blue spiders though... or... what was the question again?

DarkLord153
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on: April 05, 2017 12:50
Extra question: Why did nobody care about the two missing wizards after the destruction of Barad-Dur? Most of the evil has been cleansed,and they have a strong enough army to march to Rhun and search for them,but it seems that they didn't care or didn't want to go there. Looks strange because they are two of the Istari....
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Gandolorin
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on: April 05, 2017 03:23
For the movie, they are far too peripheral. I mean, Tom Bombadil was left out entirely (a decision I can understand). In the book probably too, I'm not sure one can consider the Blue Wizards entirely canonical. And at any rate, it had been about 2000 years since the five wizards had come to Middle-earth, and who knows how many centuries since the blue wizards had set off for the east, which was their destination as per some of the sources cited above by Elthir.
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tarcolan
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on: April 06, 2017 03:50
We don't know what happened to Radagast either.
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Elthir
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on: April 06, 2017 09:51
Radagast was at the Battle of Badon... or so I hear
DarkLord153
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on: April 06, 2017 11:17
Radagast we know of in the books at least.But the two Blue Wizards went totally missing and unheard of so i don't know.
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DarkLord153
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on: April 07, 2017 09:42
I just searched for "staff" in all of the movie scripts, including the extended versions, and I didn't find any reference to Gandalf gathering the staffs, but, aha!, there is this quote:


In the movie,PJ called the staff ''rods''. But I think he surely ment ''staff'' with that word.
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DarkLord153
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on: April 07, 2017 09:47
I'm certain that whenever Gandalf's wooden thingy is mentioned in the books (except by Saruman), it is called a staff.


That is true. In the second movie The Two Towers Hama asks for Gandalf's staff. In the same 10 minutes, Grima shouts ''His staff'', in the scene where he notices Gandalf was allowed to take his staff in front of Theoden.
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tarcolan
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on: April 12, 2017 02:13
Only Saruman refers to the wizard's staffs as rods. In HoME VIII the original quote has Saruman referring to staffs, though no explanation is given for the change to rods. It probably just scanned better. This draft is also the first reference to the five wizards in any of his writings, and of the palantir. So a crucially formative episode in the evolution of the story.
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