Peter Jackson very plainly not only has marijuana in mind, but thinks it is absolutely hilarious that halflings and wizards might use drugs that aren’t so legal in the modern US. In the books though it was explicitly called some variety of Nicotiana.
Saruman was pretty judgmental of the other wizards’ drug use considering he clearly had a cocaine habit. I mean you don’t get a nickname like “The White” for nothing.
I can hazard a guess as to what the Blue Wizards were up to behind the scenes as well.
because he is a pointless interlude that adds nothing to the story.
I’ll put it this way: if George Lucas had made the LOTR movies then Bombadil would have tagged along with the Fellowship through the entire series of films. He’s that kind of character.
Slashfic things aside, it does almost seem that Beorn in The Hobbit was kind of a beta version of Bombadil in LOTR. Weird, over powerful character who could probably solve most of the other characters’ problems but doesn’t because he’s above all that or something.
i haven’t gotten a chance to see the video, and maybe it gets covered therein, but my personal theory about Bombadil is that all he is is the kids doll. he’s a tolkein creation too, and why can’t tolkein just put him in the world he created, with no real reasoning and no in universe explanation. i think tolkein could get that meta if he wanted to
Well, nicotine has been used as an intoxicant and even hallucinogenic by cultures for a long time, as well as cannabis. 
Didn’t Bombadil say that he walked the lands before the elves? So, the First, but not a man. And I doubt Goldberry is human either, unless the Riverman is just some Middle Earth Mike Fink. (Which would still have been an interesting story, but not this one.)
Tolkien never saw the Santa Cruz Mountains either, but of course that’s what Middle Earth looked like in my mind when I lived near there as a child and had never been anywhere else
There were attempts at growing tobacco in the Cotswolds (which The Shire is partly based on) and one of the more successful varieties was reported to be mildly hallucinogenic.
That’s something very interesting to me. The main alkaloid in tobacco is famously nicotine…but looking into it I guess some species also contain notable amounts of harmala alkaloids, which can have a hallucinogenic effect. I hadn’t heard of that before, thank you.
That explains it clearly:
To understand Tom Bombadil is to understand that Tolkien wrote the first seven or eight chapters of what would become The Fellowship of the Ring as if it were The Hobbit 2 , a cheerful, simple sequel of adventure, suspense, and gentle asides to its intended audience: children.
And makes me wish for the Hobbit 2, I prefer the carefree storytelling much more than the melodramatic Lord of the Rings.
Because once that “ring a dong dillo” stuff started up everybody would flee the cinema.
Did you even watch the clip?! It conclusively proves TB is neither Eru nor an Ainu.
TL;DR Tom Bombadil is… Tom Bombadil!
While there seems to be not much Bombadil love in this thread, what I’m reading here actually makes me slightly curious about attempting to read the trilogy again. (In my misspent youth, I made it into the third book, but got bogged down in some of the histories and gave up. Never saw the third movie either.)
I can imagine it now: Gandalf facing the Balrog at the bridge, and, suddenly, “HI, HO! TOM BOMBADIL IS A MERRY FELLOW…”
Gandalf: “YOU SHALL NOT TAKE THE PISS.”
There’s more dry history in the first book than in any of the other books as far as i recall, typically for friends of mine i tell them that if they can make it past the first book the other ones pick up in storytelling pace. I’d give it a re-read, the last book is pretty lively though it is more of an anxious read due to the hanging sense of doom that every character deals with.
Gonna email this to my mother, who first read me the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings when I was around 10 years old. Tom is her favorite character by far.
