Did the film ruin your image of ME?

Originally posted by Mrs. Maggott
I didn't mean to suggest that Bilbo's putting the Ring on was contradictory.
This sequence of events clearly demonstrates the Ring's sentience.

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Nice to be on-line at the same time Mrs M!
That's OK; you said "Bilbo's behaviour was inexplicable", I was trying to show that the book does explain it.
The line does say the ring "slipped on his finger" but at that point I don't take that to mean anything different from "he slipped it on his finger". I completely agree that the ring does what it wants, but at that very first encounter it seems like a perfectly ordinary thing to happen without any supernatural significance.

What I meant by "inexplicable" was that he was running around in deadly peril - with his hand in his pocket! I found that particularly "inexplicable" if one did NOT factor in the Ring.

Unless Bilbo knew of some actual weapon in his pocket (and, of course, he couldn't have considered the Ring as a weapon, at least at that point), why on earth would he have done such a thing? Surely whether or not he still possessed the Ring would hardly have occupied his mind under the circumstances UNLESS there was some power working on his mind from within the Ring itself that caused him to think that its possession was important at that critical juncture.

Originally posted by Mrs. Maggott
What I meant by "inexplicable" was that he was running around in deadly peril - with his hand in his pocket!....
why on earth would he have done such a thing?

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To summarise what I said before, after checking the book, he wasn't running around YET; he didn't even realise deadly peril YET. There's nothing inexplicable, nothing to explain.
He did it for a very simple reason: Gollum asked what he had in his pockets, he felt in his pocket to find out.
The ring does contrive its own destiny, but we don't need to believe that every little thing that happens to it happens because it makes it happen! This incident could have happened with any old ring.
Things hotted up rapidly after that, and the ring did start to influence matters- it somehow got off B's finger and back in his pocket to allow the goblins to see him, and then he had the sense to put it back on.

I would never let a awful film like that intrude on my thoughts of middle earth