Here’s the most important thing you need to know about Tom Bombadil: He’s a merry fellow whose jacket is blue and his boots are yellow. No, seriously. Understand that and you strike right at the heart of this rhyme-ridden oddball of a character.
Introduced at the tail-end of chapter 6 in “The Fellowship of the Ring,” after Frodo and his friends first attempt to flee their home country of the Shire as well as the dangers attracted by the One Ring in his possession, Bombadil is something of a deus ex machina. When he isn’t breaking out into song or silly little poems about his colorful wardrobe, he saves our Hobbits from trouble in a particularly hostile forest by exercising an unnatural command over nature itself. It soon becomes clear that he has a mystical presence to him, especially when his equally enigmatic wife Goldberry describes him in downright godlike terms. Asked by Frodo who Bombadil really is, she merely responds, “He is.” Later on in chapter 7, he all but breaks the world-building Tolkien carefully cultivated. Seeming to know all about Frodo’s top-secret quest, Bombadil asks to see the Ring. When he slips it on his finger, he doesn’t turn invisible or seem affected by its dark magic in the least. And when Frodo puts it on, Bombadil sees him as clear as day. Creepy!
It’s no wonder Tom Bombadil has always flummoxed anyone who’s dared tried to adapt “The Lord of the Rings” into a visual medium. Director Peter Jackson wanted no part of the weirdo in his movies and even Ralph Bakshi, the artist perhaps most well-suited to bring him to life in his 1978 animated film, ultimately steered clear of him as well. Will “The Rings of Power” do what those adaptations could not?