I Can’t Stop Thinking About Grima Wormtongue
By: John Devore
Tags: Movies, Ethics, Cinema, Fantasy, Film

Photo: New Line Cinema

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Grima Wormtongue

The spineless, forked-tongue ‘Lord of the Rings’ villain is a hero to many

I wonder what The Lord the Rings author JRR Tolkien would think of our times. I’m positive he would be pro-Brexit. I’m sure he’d be shocked by the diversity and dysfunction of his beloved England and most of the West.

The man had one of the most creative minds of the last century but he was certainly the type of person who’d call the police if they saw someone in their neighborhood who didn’t look exactly like everyone else who lived in the neighborhood. He definitely wouldn’t be in favor of letting non-Hobbits live in The Shire. The Shire is for tiny fussy white people with gorilla feet and only tiny fussy white people with gorilla feet. If you’re not tiny, nor white, nor gorilla footed — or worse, French — then bugger off.

Was Tolkien racist? I don’t know. He was a product of the British Empire, and those fancy gentlemen never met a culture run by people of color they didn’t want to immediately subjugate and then exploit. I love his books though. They’re examples of a human imagination transcending the limits of a single person’s prejudices.

I do think he’d be dismayed to see his island — and the whole of the English-speaking world — populated by Grima Wormtongues. There are many self-absorbed Gollums obsessed with various precious’s and not enough selfless Samwise Gamgees. But watch the news. Scroll through social media. The US and UK are infested with snivelers. Calculating ass-kissers. The White House is home to men who softly beg a brutish president for favors while kneeling on monogrammed pillows. From their knees, they make kissy-faces.

There is a generation of adult men whose primary life question is: What Would Grima Wormtongue Do? And the answer is: Grima Wormtongue would do anything if it means he got something in return. Grovel, weep, purr. Whatever. The ends justify the means. The bigger the ends the more sordid the means.

Grima Wormtongue was King Théoden of Rohan’s chief counselor, all the while working in secret for the evil wizard Saruman. For years, Wormtongue used a spell of Saruman to hypnotize the king with flattery, advise, and sweet talk. It is suggested that Wormtongue’s reward for betraying his people would be the king’s niece Éowyn. Wormtongue is a sex pest and a jellyfish and a bootlicker. A human-shaped eel who lies for profit.

In Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies Wormtongue is played by Brad Dourif, a brilliant character actor with a wide range and rare intensity. The man has had a decades-long career. My first memory of him is in the problematic classic Jack Nicholson movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (some of you may know that movie as the problematic sequel to Netflix’s Ratched.)

He’s turned in memorable performances in David Lynch’s Dune, Exorcist III, and as the original voice of murder doll Chucky in the Child’s Play series. But he should be remembered as the vulgar and kindly Doc Cochran from HBO’s Deadwood.

His eyebrow-less performance as Grima is one of his best, though. He is pathetic and conniving. Part man, part snake. The movie may portray him as slightly more formidable as the book but the point is made: Long before the fall pride goeth, pride’s fat head swollen with empty compliments made by greedy flunkies.

Eventually, the dark spell on Théoden was broken by Gandalf the White, and Wormtongue was cast from the kingdom. In The Return of the King, the third book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Wormtongue cuts the throat of Saruman, who had slowly transformed from his mentor to his tormentor. This comes late in the book, during a climactic battle in the Shire. Wormtongue is, himself, felled by arrows.

Like Wormtongue, Saruman was also corrupted by a great and powerful evil. Both men thought they could thrive as servants of wickedness. They were both wrong. This is not a subtle warning in Tolkien’s text, nor in the movies. It’s a warning no one takes seriously anymore because there are far too many men in the news who think they’re going to win sucking up to cruelty and avarice.