Tolkien enthusiasts, you have been outmatched. When it comes to the Lord of the Rings, no one is a bigger fan than late night host Stephen Colbert. We’ve all seen him go toe-to-toe with the likes of James Franco and director Peter Jackson only to bury them under a mountain of detailed references that would have even James Joyce saying, “So. Many. Words. Does. Not. Compute.”
So when a few brave audience members dared to tempt fate by asking some seemingly innocent LOTR questions before the Late Show began taping, Colbert once again unleashed his encyclopedic knowledge of the fantasy series onto the world.
“Who is your favorite Tolkien character?” one person asked, to which he responded, “Well, Samwise Gamgee is the best character.” Did you really expect it to end there? Good, neither did I.
After explaining why he’s the “real hero” of the story (Spoiler alert: He piggybacks Frodo up Mount Doom), he then launches into a tangent which raises the question why anyone would trust Frodo with tossing the ring into the fiery chasm. “Because when Gandalf first tells him that the ring is the Ring of Power, he says to him, ‘Try to throw the ring into the fire….throw it in your little coal fire here’ and he can’t do it then. Why do you think he’s gonna be able to throw it into the cracks of Doom later?”
I mean, he has a point. In fact, after spending more time with the Ring knowing that it corrupted its previous bearers, wouldn’t he be even less inclined to part ways with it? As Colbert puts it, “Gandalf did not put as much thought into this as I have.”
Another member of the audience asked which character he’d like to interview on the show and he chose Gandalf, not because of the aforementioned questions, but because of where he comes from. In fact, he spends little time going into why he’d want Gandalf as a guest and instead, focuses on his backstory as one of the Maiar who are more like quasi-gods (not demi-gods as his annotation on the video explains). I could go into more details but my eyes are glossing over as I type this sentence.
The point is, nobody is as adorably nerdy as Stephen Colbert and watching him fanboy makes us all better in the end. You’re welcome.
(via YouTube, image via screepcap)
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