A Tom Bombadil What If . . .

[Keith Mathison]

I'm currently teaching a class on the works of Tolkien and in our last class we talked about Tom Bombadil.

Tom Bombadil is the strangest creature in Middle-earth. He was originally a little Dutch doll owned by one of Tolkien's children, and Tolkien made up funny stories for him. He threw Bombadil into Lord of the Rings to give the hobbits an adventure along the way.

This raised an odd question in my mind this morning.

What if Tolkien's children had been raised in the 80s and owned a G.I. Joe action figure and were into early rap music. The book could have been so much different if Frodo ran along the path in the Old Forest crying "Help, help help!" And then he suddenly hears a noise far away down the path. It's someone singing a song. And as they get closer, he hears the lyrics:

Said a hip-hop, the hippie to the hippie
The hip, hip-a-hop and you don't stop rockin'
To the bang, bang the boogie, say up jump the boogie
To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.

And then Frodo sees him. He's dressed from head to toe in camouflage, carrying a huge machine gun in one hand and a bunch of white water lilies in the other - all while singing lyrics from Rapper's Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang.

I think G.I. Joe would have come in handy in the war against Sauron.

And in the movies, he would be played by the Rock.

 

[Starbrow]

The image of the traditional Tom Bombadil rapping made me chuckle. And of course Goldberry would be DJing.

 

[Keith Mathison]

Here is the Rock as Tom Bombadil if Tom Bombadil had been a G.I. Joe action figure.