Christopher Tolkien has died | Hacker News Reader

Christopher Tolkien has died

theguardian.com

514 pointsdeadmetheny227 comments

RIP Christopher Tolkien. His labors have given the world a great gift.

And, given the subject, I just have to drop what I believe to be one of the greatest lines of literature:

Elrond: “The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

Wow! these lines encourage me to read the LotR books. Thanks for sharing.

There are so many wonderful lines to be found...

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

The Shadow of the Past,The Fellowship of the Ring. [Frodo expresses his disgust for Gollum to Gandalf having just learned that Gollum likely informed Sauron that the ring is with Bilbo in the Shire]

[Frodo] “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that bile creature, when he had the chance!”

[Gandalf] “Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”

“I am sorry,” said Frodo. “But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum” “

You have not seen him,” Gandalf broke in.

“No, and I don’t want to,” said Frodo. “I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.”

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.“

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Gandalf is around two thousand years old at that point. What he might call "my time" has been very different from most other people's. He has seen kingdoms rise and fall, forests grow and wither, cities built and deserted many times over. Yet he has this peculiar ability to relate to and sympathize with the mere mortals around him, conferring to them bits and pieces of the wisdom he's gained over all those years. When he says "So do I," he is not faking sympathy. He really is down-to-(Middle-)Earth and knows how ordinary people feel.

It's no secret many parts of LotR are influenced by Tolkien's experiences in WW1, but in these lines it seems especially evident.

There is a letter Tolkien wrote to a fan where he says:

"My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself."

https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-to...

But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn had also gone, and the land was silent.

There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by the men that come after, and elanor and nimphredil bloom no more east of the sea.

Of course, the scene in "The Two Towers" movie that uses some of these phrases is quite wonderful ("Elrond's Prophecy").

"....an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world."

LOTR is unlike anything else supposedly in the same genre. It is unique and a riveting read.

Some opine that Tolkien started the fantasy genre as we know it.

Others opine that he ended it, citing everything that followed as a pale imitation.

It also falls victim to that thing.

That thing where something groundbreaking spawns absolutely countless numbers of (mostly pale) imitations, people experience those imitations first, and then then when they finally experience out the original they find it kind of underwhelming.

It's so frustrating!

These lines from The Silmarillion really hit me the other day. It relates pretty well to death and impermanence in general.

"But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends: as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song."

OT, but his style is so dense in that book. Why did he write it like that? I've never been able to finish it. I find it almost impenetrable. The Hobbit I read with joy and ease even as a young child. In LOTR, sometimes after reading a paragraph I needed to pause to digest and to connect the dots. In The Silmarillion I need that pause after each clause.

This sucks, because I _need_ to know what's in the book.

Checkout this talk by Brandon Rhodes - it explains the context in which the Hobbit and LoTR were written in. I won’t spoil it, but I think it’ll answer your question.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qVlqBxpCG24

It’s also, coincidentally, the best talk I’ve ever seen on code reviews.

I'm only just getting started on this, but it's really good so far, so thank you for sharing it!

I read through and finished The Silmarillion once, when I was younger.

I remember nothing.

Afaik The Silmarillion was more of a backstory, not really fit for publishing at Tolkiens death. Christopher was the one I believe who collected all the materials into its current form. Don’t forget Tolkien himself was a master linguist!

I think two key points as to your question of _why_ he wrote it like that. First, it is not a novel that he planned out and then sat down and wrote. It's an amalgamation of disparate stories that Christopher cobbled together into a single book because that was the only way they could sell it to the publishers. It's also the quasi-religious tome of the Tolkien world, so rather than comparing the readability to a Stephen King novel, compare it to something like the Bible or the Torah.

All that said, it took me several reads before I felt like I really 'got' it. The hardest part for me was grasping the long timelines since most of it is a story of the elves and they are immortal. You might be following the same character arc for thousands of years. All that struggle was worth it though, because when you reread LOTR _after_ reading The Silmarillion, you pick out things in LOTR that you didn't even know were there before.

> RIP Christopher Tolkien. His labors have given the world a great gift.

Well said. Also, he was a rare example of someone who inherited a trove of intellectual property and actually did something with it other than sit back and ride the gravy train. For that alone I have a great deal of respect for him. He will be missed.

A long time ago I was working at an observatory searching for new asteroids. For cloudy nights, they had a large library of paperbacks and I read LOTR twice through. Because of this, when I got to name a newly discovered asteroid, I wanted to call it Tolkien. I wrote to the publisher and got a wonderful short letter back from Rayner Unwin, who talked to Christopher Tolkien about it - here is the letter:

https://imgur.com/a/XDGwOl6?

That's an awesome first-hand story, and made me read up on 2675 just now.

For those who don't know, Christopher Tolkien played a key role of editing and compiling his father's drafts and notes into several complete books published after his death, including The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, and Unfinished Tales. Basically everything that came after The Lord of the Rings.

Indeed: while practically everything in The Silmarillion was his father's words, it did not appear until after JRR Tolkien's death. Only his father's name appears on it, but Christopher's editing was absolutely essential. It represents neither Tolkien's last thoughts nor his best writing, but the ones that Christopher felt were most consistent with the published Lord of the Rings.

Christopher doesn't get enough credit for the monumental task of piecing something vaguely coherent from Tolkien's numerous drafts. He basically devoted his life to understanding his father's work. And that is effort should be appreciated: Tolkien was one of the most creative literary thinkers of the past century, and having so much insight into his process is almost unique among authors.

And that was the most complete one of the bunch, from my understanding. Children of Hurin was only scraps before Christopher turned it into something cohesive. He still described his role as "editorial", but his father did not even have a draft of a standalone Hurin book.

As I understand it a lot of the heavy lifting on that (the Silmarillion) was done by a young Guy Gavriel Kay. But neither of them have been very forthcoming about the collaboration.

Christopher has also publicly expressed regret at how quickly he assembled the published Silmarillion, I wonder if that's related.

Was he thinking about a re-edited edition of The Silmarillion? With significant changes?

My understanding is that The Silmarilion was originally conceived as wrapped in Bilbo's Translations ftom the Elvish*. Christopher Tolkien said that he regretted not having that in the published version.

But there was never any talk of a new edition.

It has been years since I read about Kay's role, but IIRC he wrote only a few very brief passages and the pair were open about their roles. I remember being surprised at how little new material had to be written to make J.R.R. Tolkien's own texts coherent.

The fact that it's not an easy thing should be appreciated when you look at how e.g. Brian Herbert's continuations of his father's writing were received, and is one of the reasons Rhianna Pratchett would rather write more video games (most notably the original Mirror's Edge and the latest Lara Croft reboots) than more Discworld.

Brian Herbert always struck me as cashing in on his father's popularity, rather than trying to augment the original vision. Frank Herbert took pains in the original Dune series to not spend time detailing the backstory of the Butlerian Jihad period of the world's history: to him, it was unimportant. For Brian to then explicitly devote a prequel trilogy to it gives it about as much weight in my eyes as a Star Wars Expanded Universe novel.

I see no reason to believe Brian Herbert's claims that the work he has released (mostly farmed out to Kevin J Anderson) is actually based on anything real from his father's notes. If they are, he ought to release those to the public so we can form our own judgement. The Brian Herbert books are simply awful, and don't seem consistent with his father's work to me at all.

Christopher Tolkien released extensive amounts of his fathers drafts and brainstorms. It's fascinating material, and underlines the integrity of Christopher Tolkien and the love of his dad's corpus.

Here's the most damning-with-faint-praise thing I can think to say, and it's true: I thought the House books (before the Jihad books) were the least bad things Kevin J. Anderson has ever had a hand in.

Brian Herberts books, the Game of Thrones final and from what I've heard the last Star Wars movie all have their detractors but personally I'm thankful for at least giving closure to the overall story arc. It might not be good but at least it's over.

I also liked some of Brian Herberts books, particularly the prelude series. Legends was horrible and I think the series could have ended fine without the backstory.

I reread the Dune series last year. I knew of, but nothing about, the Brian Herbert books other than that a handful existed. I was pretty surprised and very disappointed to see how badly they were panned. Clearly not another Chris Tolkien situation.

I enjoyed all of the prequel books. They have a more modern feel to them when compared to the classic Dune novels, so that's what may turn some people off.

Christopher Tolkien, unlike Brian Herbert, was a distinguished literary scholar of his own right. I tried to get through Paul of Dune, but it's drivel. And I'm a pretty forgiving reader, having devoured plenty of dreck and enjoyed it (like the Hunger Games trilogy for example).

> having devoured plenty of dreck and enjoyed it (like the Hunger Games trilogy for example)

I'm surprised you consider the Hunger Games to be dreck. They're clearly books for teenagers, but have a strong voice, and have the honesty to show the costs their characters paid for their heroism.

And also drawing the final maps that appeared within The Lord of the Rings, if you've ever pored over them while reading. For me, they were an integral part of the book too, and something that also defined the fantasy genre experience and helped cement the world building of it.

This is quite true! However, also I have a bit of a rueful laugh whenever I think about LOTR's world-building because it was such a red herring for so many imitators who leaned so heavily into crafting their own intricate fantasy worlds but never matched the magic of LOTR because they could never recreate its heart.

While primarily an editor for his father's work, he was a scholar in his own right. He released his own translation of a Norse epic, "The Saga Of King Heidrek The Wise":

http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/The%20Saga%20Of%20King%20...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_family

That's a nice hearty family tree.

It always makes me a little sad when there's a historical figure I liked and their family tree just kind of peters out after a bit. May be a bit silly, since I liked them for their intellectual output or creativity or political impact.

I was literally just looking at this for the same reason. I'm sure it's a bit silly and sentimental, but the notion of there still being a living connection to them in the world makes me feel they're not entirely gone.

But what about Nicholas and Anna Tolkien?!

Same. Like with Nikola Tesla or H. P. Lovecraft, who died more or less impoverished and were nowhere as cherished in their lifetime as they are now, and many others like them who only received posthumous appreciated, it's like they were cheated by fate. It makes me angry at how the world treated people like them.

It's the same for many now-revered classical composers. I think sometimes the world is just not ready to receive and understand true genius. Their creativity takes decades to truly appreciate.

If you find yourself in Paris, the National Library has a great exhibit on JRR Tolkien [0] until February 16. Christopher Tolkien's work is heavily featured. It's fully translated in English (for once).

[0] https://www.bnf.fr/en/agenda/tolkien-journey-middle-earth

I have so many things to say here, but I think that the kernel of it is as follows.

The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin are a gift, unlooked for and unexpected. They are the best founding mythology one could ask for, three Silmarils in the crown of a lifetime sorting through the mind of his father. We can wish that JRR had lived another lifetime, we are blessed to have gotten Christopher in his stead. If you have not read the forward to The Fall of Gondolin it is a timely and poignant reflection. All I can say is thank you.

The verses are so vivid, so poignant. They talk of great deeds, vows (e.g sons of Feanor),the powers people had, the nobility they showed when faced with terrible evil.

It makes one really sad for a lost world.

What sad terrible news. I finished reading the Silmarillion just last week, and was impressed by how he turned loosely associated stories and myths into a single, cohesive narrative that even had full continuity with LoTR. Just this week again I was marveling that he was still around.

I don't see a person dying after 95 years of a well-lived productive life as terrible. That's a pretty pathological view.

Celebrate his life. And maybe read some other things about the many much more healthy perspectives cultures around the world have developed around death.

Sadness is fine, that's part of processing a loss. But neither this loss nor the appropriate sadness are terrible things.

Why are suffering, illness, and death not terrible things - especially if we have the happiness of a life well lived as a contrast?

He definitely suffered some personal tragedies - there were allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of some passing Oxford acquaintances of his father IIRC

If you read Tolkien (John, not Christopher) death is a gift given to Men that even the Valar (essentially the pantheon of Arda) do not understand. It is certainly not viewed as a negative.

The Valar and Maiar are explicitly not a pantheon, just as the House of Stewards are explicitly not kings. The Gift of Men is terribly obvious in that light: they get to strut and fret their hour upon the stage, then go directly to join Ea Illúvatar. The Valar cannot hold them, they go to join the heavenly chorus. The message is not as direct as in his friend C.S. Lewis’ tales, but it’s there.

If you prefer to term Eru, together with the Ainur, a pantheon that would be more appropriate. The Valar are more like the Olympians as the subset of this pantheon most relevant to Arda.

Also, I don't believe it's said that Men join Eru in death. Just that they will take part in the music after Dagor Dagorath. I think you're sweeping numerous other mythological influences under the rug if you choose to view that as predominantly Abrahamic in origin.

It doesn't carry much weight when we write how lucky we are to be mortal, since being immortal has never been a realistic option.

It brings to mind how Iain M. Banks wrote in the Culture series about beings who chose functional immortality by uploading their consciousness to networked hardware. One of them still programmed himself to need to pee in the simulation, because he liked doing it.

Whereas I'd be surprised if any being programmed themselves to die in the simulation and be wiped away.

But if they did, I'd love to know their reasoning.

In the Culture, for biological beings, it is considered in bad taste to live more than a 4-5 centuries. Although effective biological immortality is possible, at that age most Culture citizen choose to die, while a some upload themselves or become drones.

I do not remember the books go too much into details about the reason for this tradition though.

I don't remember the reasons either: it might be to make space in the sciences and arts for new ideas and new ways of thinking.

Basically an avoidance of the kind of entrenched dogmas Eric Weinstein has been podcasting about.

Well .

I'm going to start reading the Silmarillion again tonight. Maybe this time I can finish it.

Skip the first 50 pages or so. The rest is golden.

I've tried to read it 3 times and have always given up after about 30 pages. Gonna give this a shot tonight, thanks for the advice.

If I can offer some advice and plug my own work, I did a blog that breaks it into tiny pieces, helping put them into the Lord of the Rings context, and clarifying what you actually need to remember and what you can just let wash over you. The book is a slog for everybody the first try, and I was trying to help people through that.

https://www.quora.com/q/cowpyhwvlbspffvw?sort=top

The blog is a rough draft of what I'd hoped would some day be a completed work, so it's not everything I'd like it to be. But I do think people will find it helpful nonetheless.

Don't try to read it in book order/chronological order. Instead, start with "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" (which has a brilliant short retelling of LOTR), then "Akallabêth", then "Quenta Silmarillion" and only then "Ainulindalë".

They are all largely self contained, and it's much easier to go through in quasi-reverse order. Just use the Wikipedia synopsis to get up to speed on the chronologically preceding section first. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Synopsis)

Oh man, I have to disagree. I love the Ainulindalë. Plus, without it, I imagine you'd have a difficult time figuring out who exactly the Valar are or what their role is.

That said, my advice would be to not get too caught up on the names and places and details — just let the story sort of wash over you. Many, many, many names are only said exactly once in The Silmarillion; if you try to remember them all, you'll go crazy. If you see a name 3+ times, that's when it's time to track them down on the family tree, probably.

I'd also recommend making sure you reference the map when a place keeps being mentioned. It's helpful to know the vague locations of Doriath, Nargothrond, Gondolin, etc.

It’s easy to say “don’t get caught up in the names and places” but there’s literally chapter devoted to geography.

I highly recommend the Atlas of Middle-Earth.

Here's a quick version: The Silmarillion in 1000 words. http://lotrspoofs.net/parodies-and-more/the-silmarillion-in-...

One of the gems of the early net.

I'll also recommend Evan Palmer's Ainulindalë comic: https://www.evanpalmercomics.com/ainulindale

Thanks for sharing; I hadn't seen this before and I loved it. The link to the mentioned podcast conversation with the artist was broken; I tracked it down and wanted to share: https://overcast.fm/+EIubFP3G8

And the Myths Retold version, aka "The Jam Session that Creates the Universe"!

http://bettermyths.com/the-jam-session-that-created-the-univ...

It gets really really good in the middle and the end. But that beginning is quite a slog.

It only really starts kicking off at "the unchaining of Melkor". From then on the mayhem builds fairly steadily.

It's so dry but so good. I read it on my vacation this summer (after Huckleberry Finn). What made it interesting for me was to understand the work itself and the context JRR was working in. There are references to Saxon and Finnish mythology in many of the stories. I recommend reading it alongside his collected letters; some of the explanations he made for things are enriched by his correspondences.

I honestly think it's one of the greatest works of English language literature and think it will come to be recognized more widely as such in the coming century. Academics really didn't take it seriously because it's a work of fantasy, but the use of the English language is up there with the best I've ever seen in the history of literature.

My way of ingesting it has always been to make it about the language itself, the word-music. It feels dry if you're trying to read it like a novel, because then some sections are just descriptions of geography or deities. It should be approached sort of like Shakespeare. Who today can really parse Early Modern English in real-time without having studied it beforehand? Very few. But that doesn't take away the beauty of the words.

I believe that is what he was going for: the Beowulf of the English cannon. That's what I mean by, "so dry but so good." If you don't understand the form of heroic epics and that he'd written such huge epics himself, it can pass the casual reader by.

Isn't Beowulf the 'Beowulf of the English canon?'

Perhaps he meant modern English canon. Beowulf isn't understandable to modern speakers.

Precisely, thank you.

I read it recently. The best advice I can give is to allow yourself to read it slowly. I spent a lot of time flipping to the back to get a clearer picture of who someone or something is. And it was worth it.

There's more world-building in some paragraphs of the Silmarillion than there is in whole novels of some modern scifi/fantasy fiction.

I remember picking it up after LotR because I loved Blind Guardians concept album masterpiece “Nightfall in Middle-Earth” about it. I ended up enjoying the Silmarillion quite a bit more than the main trilogy (and am not alone in that). What was crucial for me was printing the family trees and maps and putting them somewhere closeby (e.g. a wall) for quick reference.

I loved LoTR, but Silmarillion is an higher level of epicness.

I understand that later in life Christopher Tolkien regretted having published it as he felt he had done too much editing, but I'm glad he did anyway.

Last year, I finished reading The Lord of the Rings to my girls. Before that I read them The Hobbit. It took about three years to finish it all, but it was a great for them as an opportunity to learn about a variety of topics (language arts in general primarily, but especially vocabulary). The experience was also good to me because, while I'm typically prone to skim through less interesting passages, it forced me to read every word.

I adopted voices for the different characters to keep them interested, and to give them something to look forward to, I would not let them watch the movies until we finished reading the corresponding volume of the series. We had so much fun with this!

I'm extremely thankful for Christopher's work because the movies (which were released when I was a teenager) were my first introduction to his father's work.

What ages did you do? Were they able to keep up with the story OK at those ages?

My daughter is about to turn 6 and I think that the hobbit would be too much for her. I too would like to hear what age he started and if they had any resistance at first. My big problem now is the only Barbie book they had at the library was in Italian and google translate makes me seem like I’m having a stroke when I read it to her but she loves it anyway.

I probably wouldn’t have attempted it when the oldest was that young, but my girls were 7 and 5 when we started.

I started reading The Hobbit to my son (5 years old). We read half a chapter every night, or even less before he falls sleep. He loves it, and asks me to read to him when I almost forgot to do so. He asks A LOT of questions about new words and differences with the movies (he is a big fan of them). Our pace is quite slow, but it is a great time together.

I read the Hobbit to my daughter when she was 4 and to my son when he was 6, both closer to 5 and 7. I aimed for 10 pages a night of a pocket edition we have, which meant 25-30 nights or so.

My daughter got really scared with the giant spiders in the forest and wanted to quit, but I managed to convince her to go on. She was happy we did because everything turned out fine in the end. She was bored by the battle at the end of the book, but we got through it.

It's hard to know how much of the story my son understood. I usually reminded him what happened last time every time we started ("They were walking through the forest, remember?" or "Last time, they just reached the mountain!"). The individual parts are easy enough to understand, I think.

They both loved the riddle game with Gollum, and it sparked (or fed) an interest in riddles in both. It's an excellent book when you want to take the step up from children's books.

IMO, differences between individuals in verbal skills at developing ages are so different that any anecdotal evidence is unlikely to be helpful.

I've seen 4 year-olds completely rapt while listening to a story like that and 8 year-olds unable to follow it.

We have four special needs kids and, while we might have just gotten lucky, I firmly believe that our determination to read aloud to them from birth and expose them to classic literature from an early age has directly contributed to their ability to sit through the works and comprehend them at an early age. They’re definitely all developmentally different, and have begun speaking and reading at different times, but they’re all able to follow along well.

We have four kids, but only three are special needs. Most of them were able to follow "adult" works from a fairly young age, but one of them was not until age 8; he struggled following simpler works (e.g. Gannett's My Father's Dragon series) in the first grade. Once it "clicked" though, he was great.

When I looked into it, I found similar stories from educators of verbal skills not clicking until the 3rd or 4th grade, followed by a rapid catch-up and then zero lag. According to most special-ed folks I talked to, if there are more specific issues at a younger age (e.g. problems with reading comprehension, but not auditory, or vice-versa) it can be indicative of a learning disability.

You are 100% true about reading to them from a young age (and not worrying too much about "hard" words; kids don't know which words are supposed to be hard unless you tell them) makes a big difference. Seeing kindergarteners from homes without a single book in them vs ones read to from an early age is rather eye-opening.

My daughter didn't really speak until she was 5. Just a few words at age 4. Was diagnosed as autistic. Always loved books and being read to. Had intense reading comprehension issues until 5th grade or so. Couldn't remember the word or sentence she just read. Was home schooled for 5th thru 8th grade. Somewhere in there her comprehension issues fixed themselves. She reads everyday, and is a straight A student. She's 15 now, and wants to be a writer. The brain is a wonder. She started slow, but finished strong. Some learning issues can sort themselves out, so never lose hope.

There were definitely times I had to remind them of past events and help them understand the more mature passages, but we started when they were 7 and 5 and finished when they were 10 and 8.

I've been thinking that I'm due for a re-read of The Lord of the Rings for a while now. This seems like a good signal to start tonight.

I also read The Hobbit to my 3 daughters when they were younger. Whenever I read to my daughters, regardless the book, I would make up different voices for each character. I will admit that making 13 different voices for the dwarves pushed my dad skills to the limit! When they later watched the films, they would respond, "That's not what they sound like." It did my heart good.

I'll second the overwhelming thankfulness to Christopher Tolkien for everything he did to keep Middle-Earth alive. May his journey into the West be swift for I have no doubt that he would be welcomed into Valinor with open arms.

I'm not a girl but my dad did this and I had the exact same feeling when I saw the movies!

It's great to see so many reading parents here. I read The Hobbit and LoTR to my daughter starting when she was around 9. It must've been almost a year per book because we finished last year when she was 13. I had to explain some of the subtler passages and backstories, but she got much of it. We watched the movies together this year and she picked up most of the differences (though even I didn't pick up on the deep changes in Eowyn's character, as linked in another comment here).

I had read the books as a teenager in the 80's, 20 years before the movies existed, the same paperback books from my father that we re-read together. I was happy to re-read them, because I had missed much of the poetry (as noted in other comments here) and forgotten some of the story. I had seen the movies in between, but I'm referring to the deeper stories and in-book legendaria that the movies didn't cover. Despite the changes and omissions (and Hollywood effects), I still think the movies did a good job, as good as could be expected.

BTW, we started reading Little House on the Prairie when my daughter was 4, and also read all of Narnia and a few others before Tolkein. Reading with your kids is a great way to re-discover the books of your childhood (or discover, because I'd never read LHotP).

I started reading "The Hobbit" to my oldest son when he was about 4. He loved it. What astounded me, though, was that his little brother, who was only two at the time sat and listened with great intent. I didn't do the voices, but in retrospect, I should have. I realized later how much fun it was.

Of course, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. When we bought my second son the hard-bound original stories of Thomas the Tank Engine, which was filled with wonderful art, he literally sat and paged through it for like 45 minutes straight. And he wasn't even 2 yet at the time.

I also read my kids "The Wizard of Oz", all the original "Winnie the Pooh" books, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and many others, including the usual short-form kids books like Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman when they were really little. I miss reading to my kids, but eventually we couldn't all fit in the bed together... (Plus, they're all adults now.)

The commercialization screwed it for me too. I remember that at the time the first movie was released, the web was scorched of fan material. Fans where threatened and insane amount of fan arts where removed and replaced by commercialized material, especially cartography.

I just read that he was quite critical of Jackson's adaptation. I'm not a huge fan of the franchise (not too critical either since it's not the easiest adaptation to make) and I'd love to read if Christopher made detailed comments on what he felt was wrong. Le Monde (french newspaper) interviewed him but he only said one line "they turned it into an action movie for teenagers".. I'd hope he had more to say elsewhere :)

Or maybe I should just read the silmarillion

And now Amazon or somebody is going to make some sort of LoTR prequel TV series!? Travesty, I say! Sheer, naked greed.

Yuck. I've refused to see any of the LoTR movies, so this looks like another thing I'll refuse to watch.

It's a fascinating read the complete Le Monde article [0], but there's an extended quote in the second to last paragraph. Google translate gives me:

"The gap that has widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become, all of this is beyond me. Such a degree of commercialization reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical scope of this creation. I only have one solution left: turn my head. "

[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/07/05/tolkien-l-...

At only 95! So young for an Elf.

Interesting to see the low opinion in which he held the movies, considering the revered place in American cinema the trilogy holds. Considering the astounding length and detail with which they were adapted, what more could he have possibly hoped for? What other adaptions have done more to hold true to such a complicated and intricate fantasy universe, especially in the early 2000's and earlier? Many adaptions since, inspired by LOTR, have failed to hold to their source material with such honor and gravity (GoT, etc.).

They took out bombadil.

Thank god

I for one would have liked to see Frodo & Sam's journey to mordor in the second and third movies abbreviated a bit. It was incredibly drawn out. Otherwise I love the movies and see no room for improvement.

Tom Bombadil, I would have loved to have seen super god and his girlfriend.

Yeah but unless you've read the books, his character is a bit esoteric for the movies.

Tom Bombadil is "a bit esoteric" in the same way that a hurricane is "a bit moist."

IIRC I once read a letter from JRRT where he stated that Bombadil was a "deliberate enigma". He had no explanation for the character's apparent powers or origin. Considering the incredible amount of details and origin stories for just about every other character and race in the epos, that struck me as particularly whimsical. Sort of like an easter egg that ended up in a place that was slightly too prominent. An inordinate amount of time has been spent on the internet in debates whether Bombadil was an Elf, one of the Maiar, a human with some other item of power, one of the Valar or even even Eru Iluvatar incarnate.

That's the beautiful part about him, that I didn't get when I was younger and trying to fit him in to the model.

You have living elves that remember them originally going into the west. You have the history after they came back, including several who where there. Some know the Valar personally. You can be reasonably confident of the history. Heck, you have Maiar wandering around. And then you have Bombadil. Who is he? Nobody knows! Not the elves, not the Maiar. What does he want? To sing goofy songs. It's beautiful!

In his afterlife, JRR Tolkien lives in middle earth as Tom.

The loss of the Barrow-wights was unfortunate, and took something away from the death of the Witch-King as well.

Generally agree, loved the movies (especially the extended editions) but:

* Helm's Deep went on way too long, it was like 45 minutes of battle

* Legolas's action scenes were a little too over the top for my taste (Oliphaunt tail slide, surfing on a shield). I'm not sure the iffy CGI helped.

* Poor Faramir

I personally think Helm's Deep was just as long as it needed to be. It's just not 45 minutes of blind, pointless battle. There is storytelling, character growth, and evolution in those 45 minutes. It's one of the most efficient and well created battle scenes in modern cinema.

As far as Legolas's action scenes, are you referring to the elephant? That one was CGI, but the scene of him sliding down the stairs on a shield was actually a practical effect done with wire work. The only CGI in that scene was the removal of the wires I believe.

Yes, Faramir's story is tragic but I think that's kind of the point of his story; isn't it?

Legolas' shield stunt was over the top.

especially considering there were no elves there at all!

In the books the elves didn't come to support the men at Helm's Deep. The battle played a much smaller part in the books than it did the movies - probably because the middle one needed a climax.

The point of Faramir's story in the books is integrity in the face of great temptation. "But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo." It's not supposed to be tragic in the book. What the GP comment was saying is "Poor Faramir, the movie took part of his integrity when they had him take Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath"

Wait, Faramir suffered the identical fate in the novels, correct? My memory could be terrible.

In the books Faramir immediately rejected the ring and sent the Hobbits on their way - it wasn't a whole bunch of hand wringing. It radically changed his character.

IIRC, that Faramir plot was cut from the theatrical release and was only included in the extended version.

I think I sort of prefer showing him struggle with it and then make the right decision rather than just making the right decision easily. Resisting the temptation makes him more heroic.

There were a couple of scenes removed from the cinema version that showed his character a bit more, but that character was a huge departure from the book.

The main one was a flashback that shows his relationship with Boromir and the toxic effects of Denithor's favouritism.

The film made him look weak, violent and rash but in the books he was the polar opposite of all three.

Being tempted and resisting the ring is a already common theme in the whole book. I liked the depth they gave to Boromir in the movie, but Faramir defining characteristic, as opposed to his brother, is his immediate rejection of the ring.

In the theatrical release he takes them to Osgiliath, something he doesn't do at all in the books. His weird indecision was definitely in the theaters.

It did make him more human, so it's not entirely bad. In the books he, like Aragorn, is a paragon of humanity, straight up just better than the rest of us.

The original works were as much a careful exploration of a world not our own as they were an epic tale. Large sections of the text were devoted to describing that world.

The movies gloss over all of that to focus purely on the story.

And even with that focus on the story, we get 12 hours in the extended editions, much of it expanding on the characters and their backstories as they relate to the world in which the story takes place.

It's hard to have pages and pages of explanation of a world in a movie. The movies do that by exploring that history in the set pieces and characters, and I think most people would agree they do a magnificent job of it.

Describing the world visually? I mean that kind of text is naturally going to disappear when you're creating a movie because all of that is just going to be represented in the cinematography.

John Scalzi shared a reasonably thoughtful perspective on this on his blog a few days ago: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/01/10/why-yes-in-fact-old-m...

"... although I will note ... that a two-hour movie will not cram the entire complexity of the novel I wrote into its 120-minute running time."

"And that’s fine, and as it turns out, necessary. Movies are not books. Movies are adaptations of books, for another medium entirely. When filmmakers try to make their movies simply a “faithful” version of the book that runs at 24 frames a second, the results (speaking as a former full-time professional film critic) tend to be dreadful more often than not. I don’t want a movie of Old Man’s War that’s a retread of what I’ve already done in the book. What I want is an adaptation and interpretation of what I’ve written that’s interesting and exciting, and is faithful to the idea and feel of the universe I created."

It's been a long time since I saw the LOTR films (and never bothered to see The Hobbit, so I can't comment on those), but, as I recall, that's more or less what Peter Jackson did.

Perhaps purists aren't so easily won over by lavish production values and jaw-dropping visuals.

As if the film trilogy were nothing but eye candy?

The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was as transformative for fantasy as Star Wars was for science fiction - people didn't even think the trilogy could be filmed, much less be successful, as fantasy (like comic books and, ironically, science fiction before Star Wars) was considered cheesy, juvenile schlock forever doomed to box office failure. Peter Jackson not only filmed the unfilmable, but wound up creating what many people would consider one of the greatest motion picture trilogies ever, on many levels, beyond just spectacle. There are probably millions more Tolkein fans across the world just because the trilogy was as good as it was.

Given that the canonical onscreen adaptation of the trilogy until that point was a cartoon by Filmation from the 70s, I would hope purists could maybe see the silver lining around the cloud.

You're not wrong, but I'm just saying even some of most gorgeous and exhaustive work put into a film series isn't enough to satisfy purists. I find it fascinating, and have come to understand it.

I always enjoyed this sendup of Bakshi’s film

http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/bakshi/bakshi.htm

The Bakshi movie's Lothlórien was absolutely beautiful though. I also liked all the voice actors in that movie better than the actors in the Jackson trilogy (except I guess Samwise, who was a little silly in the Bakshi film). It also didn't have much comic relief, which I appreciated.

I would assume not being paid for those movies had something to do with it?

In February 2008, the Tolkien Trust sued New Line Cinema, the studio behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for £75 million claiming they had not received "even one penny" from the films. A request for punitive damages was denied in September 2008. (In March 2008, New Line Cinema became a unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment.) The case was resolved out of court on 8 September 2009 with the terms not made public.

In a press release, Christopher Tolkien stated, "The Trustees regret that legal action was necessary, but are glad that this dispute has been settled on satisfactory terms that will allow the Tolkien Trust properly to pursue its charitable objectives. The Trustees acknowledge that New Line may now proceed with its proposed films of 'The Hobbit.'"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578442/JRR-Tolki...

That sounds like Hollywood's famous accounting practices. They claim movies that makes 100's of millions have lost money by inflating costs that are paid to production companies and such. I'm sure someone can explain how they get away with it. But it's astounding how they claim these movies lose money, in order to shaft whomever they want.

Honestly, I don't understand how this isn't the same thing as tax fraud.

I think it's hard for many people who are emotionally and/or deeply connected to something, see it changed, modified, and reinterpreted by someone else.

Even in the world of software, how many of us have worked on a project for a long time only to hand it off to someone else, and find it hard not to have strong opinions about how they work with it, when it's no longer our responsibility?

He probably felt a degree of ownership and protectiveness over the franchise that few of us could understand. It may have been impossible to match his expectations.

I have a love/hate relationship with the movies. While the trilogy brought to life Middle-Earth to a degree I never thought imaginable, there were some elements that just fell incredibly flat.

If I had to pin it on one thing, it was that Peter Jackson and team were extremely good at portraying evil in all of its ugliness but failed to portray "goodness" with equal skill (which admittedly is not an easy thing to do!). While the honest goodness of the Hobbits was wonderful, the portrayals of "good" characters such as Aragorn and Galadriel fell very flat. This is not to blame on the actors at all as I thought Viggo did an awesome job; but the screenplay needlessly muddled the character.

Also, where was the damn poetry?

Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by the portrayal of Aragorn "falling a bit flat"?

Perhaps he was a bit too gruff or something, especially in the Fellowship of the Ring? I could possibly see that because in the book he was definitely clear-cut 'rough and ready good-guy'.

No problems with his "gruffness" as you term it; that indeed very much captured his Ranger walkings in Fellowship etc.

What was a tough pill to swallow was the self-doubt infused into the character. I know I know, character development, relatability, etc etc. But, c'mon, Aragorn is the damned KING and a leader with unflinching will (a contrast to many around him).

...

Also, where was the damn standard w/ the White Tree, Elendil when Aragorn arrived at the boat?!

As someone who had not read the books before seeing the movies (I know, I know) it added a lot of context when I found out why the elves were leaving at the end. I remember wondering why everyone was leaving if they had won. I know it was already long, but I wish they'd explained the ring's connection to magic better. It also would have explained why everyone was so willing to take the rings of power in the first place, and given more weight to the somber tone at the end.

murdering an ambassador is a little beyond "falling a bit flat"

wow, I honestly forgot about that. I'll leave my original comment untouched, but per your reminder let the record show that "falling a bit flat" fell a bit flat.

In the books, he's a confident, charismatic leader. He has self doubt when things go wrong, but he knows who he is and he has a plan - reforge Narsil, go to Gondor, unite all men, fight Sauron. In the books, he fights off 4 ringwraiths with nothing but a couple of flaming sticks (he didn't have a sword at this point). He was courage incarnate - he looked into the Palantir knowing Sauron was looking back, and he beat him. He led his men through hell - they literally go to a crypt and recruit a bunch of undead - and it was only his will and his courage that kept all of them except legolas (who doesn't fear the dead) from losing their shit.

In the movies he's a blubbering wuss. He whines about how weak he is and how weak men are, he talks about how he doesn't want to lead, he can't lead, blah blah blah. It takes Elrond saying, "you're not getting any elf strange if you don't act like a leader," for him to shape up.

Yeah but in the first movie someone accidentally threw a real knife at him, which you can see Aragon (Vigo) unscriptedly deflect it with his sword so I think that notches him up a bunch

Elf strange?

Totally agree, glad you brought this up. The actor was good but the script and the direction didn't fit with the original character at all. It felt like a modern take on the role.

I'm pretty sure Elladan and Elrohir were perfectly comfortable traveling the Paths of the Dead as well.

The problem with Aragorn in the films is that he is... An important protagonist.

And Storytelling 101 tells us that an important protagonist needs to have a character arc.

The thing is, Aragorn doesn't have a character arc in the LOTR books. His character is largely static. His entire arc was in the backstory, prior to the events of the books. By the time the book starts, he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly what he's willing to do to get it, and he does it.

The film, in order to give him an arc, muddied those waters. He turns from being a noble, confident, driven man, into a wishy-washy one-foot-in-one-foot-out wandering stoner, who spends most of his time moping, and the rest with no idea of what he wants, or what he should do to get it.

It makes for character development, but it is not an accurate portrayal of his book character. Much of his nobility in the books comes from him not having these kinds of hangups - he knows what the right thing to do is, and he does it, and people around him are awed by his conviction and charisma.

I usually don't like 'great man' stories, but I have a soft spot for his part in the LOTR books.

> His entire arc was in the backstory, prior to the events of the books.

Not only that, but even the character arc in the backstory (the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen) is nothing like the arc portrayed in the movies. Even as a young man, Aragorn is noble, confident, and driven: he is only twenty years old when he returns from great deeds in the company of the sons of Elrond and is told his true name and lineage, and from that point he knows he wants to fulfill that lineage; he is never in any doubt about it. His character arc is about all of the things he has to do and all of the knowledge he has to gain in order to be able to fulfill his lineage when the time comes.

That too.

In the film, he hemms and hawws, and can't make up his mind of whether or not he wants to be king, but he never actually articulates a single reason for why he would not want to be one.

The film:

* Expects the audience fill in the blank for why he doesn't want to be a leader.

* Tries to make him more sympathetic as a leader, by turning him into a reluctant leader, as opposed to a guy seizing power because... Something something nobility, something something hereditary monarchy is how things are done in Middle Earth, but doesn't fly super-well for modern audiences..?

As I said in the essay I posted on my blog some time ago (link upthread), I think Jackson simply didn't understand Tolkien's conceptual scheme, and couldn't parse the idea that Aragorn is simply a man who is able to make the right choices because they are right, and to help others to make right choices too. Jackson is certainly not alone in this in the modern world.

Yes and no... For some reason he didn't take reforged Anduril when he started his travel with Frodo. He must have doubts about his abilities, as a wise and practical man he might have been afraid to believe in legends. To believe that he is the legend.

It's been almost a couple decades, and I've not watched Return of the King, but I felt Faramir's changes were especially egregious. I've heard Return of the King didn't even have the Scouring of the Shire.

There were too many radical departures from what JRR Tolkien was trying to do for me to still enjoy it.

The Scouring of the Shire would've turned the theatrical cut into a 4 hour movie, and the extended cut into a 5 hour movie.

Perhaps it would've made ROTK the first dual-part series finale movie (like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, Avengers) of its kind.

LotR is a book about hobbits. They start off protected by the rangers, grow and learn throughout the book, and finally use their experiences to liberate their homeland from Saruman.

So, one of the main points (the main point?) is missed, as well as Saruman's proper death.

You're not wrong, but ROTK has already been criticized for having multiple endings in the sense that the post-Battle of the Morannon parts drag on forever, and audiences were satisfied with the hobbits getting a happy ending without having to add an extended coda about Saruman calling himself "Sharkey" and the threat of sovietization coming to the Shire. It wouldn't have flowed well as a movie.

If ROTK had been made into a two-parter finale it could have worked, perhaps. Or maybe a separate spin-off film for the Scouring.

We went to see ROTK 12 hours before my wife was heading to the hospital to give birth. Her poor bladder almost didn't survive the numerous "is it over now?" endings.

When you have that many layers, it takes a while to pop everything off the stack.

Of all those movies LOTR was the only one with a reason to have a dual part finale.

Scouring was key for one of the things that concerned Tolkien the most: that even after the most virtuous war, there are losses and hurts that can't be mended.

I remember being quite shocked when reading that part.

And also, that the oppressed can come together and cast off their oppressors. I've always thought that was a secondary reason _Scouring_ was left out of the movie.

Which is weird given that Return of the King is the shortest book (not counting the appendices).

Some people are also mourning the absence of Tom Bombadil. Maybe Jackson was saving him up for a separate movie.

I think he's said in interviews he just had no idea what to do with Tom Bombadil.

He is a bit of an odd character, especially with no context of the Silmarillion.

Part of his point. :-) (Bombadil's, that is.)

That's the charm of it. The ring has not effect on him because he doesn't covet anything, only see things for what they are.

If Jackson could turn The Hobbit into a trilogy, surely he could turn three chapters of Tom Bombadil into a miniseries or a rock opera or something.

Forget Faramir, their treatment of Elrond was the most egregious.

I loved most of the changes in Fellowship; but that was always the least cohesive and most tangled of the stories, not quite sure what it wanted to be.

I particularly loved the small touches; Boromir teaching the hobbits to use their swords, for example, helped make him a much more sympathetic and tragic figure than Tolkien did.

From Two Towers on the changes became considerably less good though; throwing out much of the plot incolving Saruman in favour of an invented-out-of-whole-cloth side quest for Aragorn was a terrible decision and, as you say, the changes to Faramir were appalling.

One positive, though, was emphasising the point that Frodo failed and the ring was destroyed by chance? That was good, because it was a key moral point Tolkien wished to make.

I never read it as "destroyed by chance". Rather, it was "the pity of Bilbo" (mentioned way back in FoTR, I believe), who did not kill Gollum when he had the chance, that finally catalyzed the destruction of the One Ring.

What kills me the most about the movies, especially the Hobbit ones, is the CGI. I watched 2 of the 3 Hobbit films this past fall and the CGI is so jarring and dated. Worse, it's heavily used and just ruins the experience for me.

For example, when they're going down the river and being pursued from the shore... come on, nearly everything in that scene is CGI and screams "we were hoping to make a theme park ride, here's the trailer!", honestly I could have lived without that scene entirely.

I did not watch any of them when they first came out though, perhaps they were better at the time but watching them now they almost feel The 10th Kingdom quality.

The Hobbit movies are far more egregious in their use of bad CGI than the original trilogy. That river scene is one of the worst offenders in modern movie history for me.

The Hobbit movies were a travesty. But The Lord Of The Rings movies made excellent use of miniature models, full size sets, make-up and costumes, and great locations. They come from a period where CGI was much more limited, and the artists behind it weren't trying to do everything with it. When you use CGI for everything, like in The Hobbit movies, you lose connection with reality and it is jarring no matter how detailed it is.

Smaug in particular is rendered as a different creature across two movies. Shrug.

(Wyrm vs dragon)

The Hobbit films had a troubled production and were terribly rushed. Here's the first video in a small YouTube series on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs

The Hobbit movies were certainly awful. At least there is a pretty good animated version that has some of the heart of the book.

The animated movie was my first Tolkien experience, and I still have fond memories of it.

They were cursed by the passing fad of 3D and IMAX. It really does not look right when viewed on a regular screen.

The CGI in LOTR was excellent. My wife and I recently rewatched it, and I thought it aged rather well - because it was used very sparingly. There's a few scenes (Pre-balrog Moria, most the battle of Pelennor Fields, The Paths of the Dead) that look quite bad, but they are few and far between.

The Hobbit, on the other hand, was awful. Way too much bad CGI. (Never mind all the other problems with that adaptation.)

And in my mind, the theme park ride started as soon as the dwarves were captured by the goblins, with the mind-blowing minecart sequence. I did not realize I was paying $14 to watch "Goblin Snuff Amusement Park Expert Swordfighter Drunken Master Ride: Part I, The Enpartening".

Yes, exactly. He effectively mangled the stories of Aragon, Faramir, and Denethor, apparently to be more "cinematic". Good is very hard to portray without being cloying or simpleminded, but geeze, he could have tried.

The weirdest part is Gollum; everyone seemed to like the portrayal in Fellowship, but then Jackson threw it out the window.

> Peter Jackson and team were extremely good at portraying evil in all of its ugliness but failed to portray "goodness" with equal skill

I think that's a fair comment. I would go even further--in fact I did, some time ago:

http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/tolkiens-ring.html

I haven't read the whole essay yet, but I'm really glad I caught your comment here. Thank you for writing this back then and for sharing it now!

> Thank you for writing this back then and for sharing it now!

Thank you for the feedback!

I just read you essay myself. That was one of the best pieces of writing that I personally read this year, to the point I found myself nodding my head in agreement the whole time, and even becoming strangely emotional when I read it. Finally I was able to articulate my mild dislike and indifference to the movies. It made the books shine in my mind with an even stronger light than before.

While the last time I read the whole trilogy was around 1988, while still at school, it (and the Silmarillion) are sort of etched into my memory. I've been putting off re-reading it for ages, but maybe it's time to do that. I will be sure to re-read your essay too.

Thank you again.

Thanks for the kudos! I'm glad you liked the essay.

I have lost count of the number of times I have re-read Tolkien's works. I first read The Hobbit in 7th grade, and went right on to LotR. It was some time before I was able to get my hands on a copy of The Silmarillion (the hard cover edition--I still have it), but I remember reading it almost straight through once I got it, because I was so keen to see what was in it after reading the appendices to LotR.

Your site doesn't seem to be loading. I also had a security warning when visiting it. I'm on Chrome, MacOS.

It might be objecting because my site is HTTP, not HTTPS; I don't have HTTPS set up. I probably should go ahead and get a certificate from Lets Encrypt since browsers are getting fussier about non-HTTPS sites.

No poems, Faramir is pretty one-dimensional with no scope whereas in the books his character is much more nobler.

And the worst of all - they left out Tom Bombadil. His character showed what state you need to be in to not be affected by the ring.

The adaptation is always going to suffer in comparison to a book like that. It's not like you can just rotate the story through 360-degrees of the audio-video dimension and have it pop out at you.

Lots of more modern fiction, written by people who think of stories first in the cinematic sense even as they are writing them, you can almost derive the film from the book. Say, Jurassic Park, for example. The departures from the novel were incidental, and the film could've been made even more faithful to the text but for the desires of the producers.

In my opinion the departures from the Jurassic Park novel were not just incidental. I enjoyed very much the Jurassic Park visual effects, but I despised the script as one of the most disappointing adaptations of novels, because it completely failed to convey the message of the book. The central idea of the book was that there are things so complex, i.e. chaotic systems, that regardless how good you are and how great are your efforts to control them, unpredictable failure is unavoidable. I did not see anything of that in the movie, where the failure of the park was just the consequence of stupid mistakes made by a bunch of morons, not the consequence of objective laws, as in the book.

Perhaps incidental is the wrong word; my point being that Spielberg absolutely could've made the script more faithful to the book without having to invent characters, dialog or settings not in the text.

I don't think he was at all surprised at how bad the films were, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't complain about them.

I think it's easy for many people who are used to a diet of truly terrible adaptations to mistake one which is merely bad for something excellent.

(I think pretty much everything about those films was very good, except for the script, which was poor on both a large and small scale.)

The films are not bad for visuals and casting/acting, but changed the story and characters and motivations far too much for fans of the books. And left out the actual ending!

I wonder if Netflix or other streaming services would have produced something vastly different. Tolkien wrote so much it really could do with more exploration.

Also if you're selling it in a movie format, you have to be able to bring in the general masses. That means cutting down a lot of the intricacies.

Amazon is making a lotr universe TV show for prime.

I am really hoping they film it with similar production values to The Man in the High Castle. I think the pacing, and the mix of reality and fantasy, in that would suit LOTR really well.

These days, LotR would be made as a multi-season epic, like GoT.

There's simply no way, no matter how technically wizardly the movies might be, that they could convey the "spirit" of the trilogy.

And, further, the movies fall far, far short of the images your own imagination can create from these classics.

And they even pollute your imagination with the limitations of the director's choices.

> And they even pollute your imagination with the limitations of the director's choices.

Exactly why I never watched the films, despite being a huge Tolkien fan from about age 9 to 16. The thought of how Hollywood would depict elves was particularly off-putting for me. I've never regretted not watching them, even when the hype was at its greatest, and any glimpses of screenshots that I've chanced upon have only confirmed that I made the right choice.

Dang, I'm almost jealous. I couldn't resist the temptation and hope that the movies could maybe possibly vaguely live up to the legacy. Unfortunately I didn't quite anticipate how those images would forever alter my vision of the story/world. Though, I've purposely waited a long time and ignored everything about it, letting the memories fade, so I can re-read the trilogy and hopefully rediscover the greatness. :)

Perhaps it's natural to be very critical of the adaptation of something your are very emotionally attached to?.

I for one loved reading the books as a kid and I felt that some scenes (Legolas shield surfing and flying between elephants) were a bit too "cheap" and unnecessary. I enjoyed the films by telling myself that there was a lot of good that offset those bads but perhaps that's easier to do when you are young than when you are on your 70s

> Legolas shield surfing and flying between elephants

The latter was bad but the former was incredibly out of place. It's the one scene I'd cut.

> Considering the astounding length and detail with which they were adapted, what more could he have possibly hoped for?

Not changing complex and interesting characters with boring Hollywood tropes (Denethor, Treebeard, Faramir)? Following Tolkein's carefully thought-out timeline of how and when and why things would have happened, rather than making every action scene a hollywood trope, where the bad guys can't hit anything and the good guys can't miss?

The best film adaptation of a book I've ever seen is the Sense and Sensibility adapted by Emma Thompson. You can't make a movie identical to a book; it doesn't work -- they're different art forms. Emma Thompson cut out big scenes, chopped out characters, and made a load of changes to make the situation more accessible to a modern audience -- but the heart of the story, and the character of the people in it, are true to the novel.

The movies jumped the shark for me when Faramir said he was going to "arrest" Frodo and bring him to Denethor. I watched the third film, but I'd emotionally checked out at that point.

One of the things that Game of Thrones got right is to realize that a novel corresponds to a dozen hours of screen time, not three. The Lord of the Rings trilogy misses a lot of the epic scope of the book, focusing a lot more heavily on battles and missing out on the sheer weight of time.

I don't know if any film could really capture that, especially to Christoper's satisfaction. But the movies are action-adventure blockbusters, and the books really aren't. It's notable that the Battle of the Hornburg was only about a page of text, but close to an hour of screen time. That kind of shift of focus recurs throughout the adaptation. Tolkien was creating an alien world; Jackson gave us a familiar Sort Of Middle Ages Or Something.

The films did manage to capture the age of the world better than anybody could possibly have imagined. Jackson hired the best artists, famed for producing images that were better than Tolkien's own, and capturing a lot of what Christopher would treasure in the book. As a series of still images, Christopher should have found a lot to admire in the films. But the dialogue doesn't achieve the same.

> Tolkien was creating an alien world; Jackson gave us a familiar Sort Of Middle Ages Or Something.

This is pretty debatable c.f. endless scholarship on the connections between LOTR and (a) Tolkein's feelings about England post-WWI and (b) Tolkein's deep connections with actual existing mythology and legend. "Different world", perhaps, but "alien world" seems a bit much.

>Tolkien was creating an alien world; Jackson gave us a familiar Sort Of Middle Ages Or Something.

As I understand it, Tolkien was trying to create a national mythology for England, so he wouldn't have intended the setting to be completely alien, as he wanted its archetypes to resonate with his own culture.

Also the main reason the films seem like a familiar medieval fantasy setting is that Tolkien basically invented the high fantasy genre and its tropes. I think one movie reviewer even panned the Lord of the Rings as being too generic and derivative, when in fact everyone else has been copying Tolkien for decades.

> One of the things that Game of Thrones got right is to realize that a novel corresponds to a dozen hours of screen time, not three.

But if LoTR hadn't accomplished what it did in its three hours, I don't think GoT would have GOTTEN its dozen hours. I think people underestimate how massively speculative fiction movies (especially fantasy and comic book adaptations) have improved in the last 20 years.

If you compare Jackson's LoTR to Ralph Bakshi's 1978 adaptation, they simply don't play in the same league at all.

That's definitely true. And within 20 years, I'd like to see them take another crack at LotR, in series format.

That, of course, will depend on the thing Amazon is doing. And on what happens with the rights now that Christopher is gone. I personally was happy to think that he was defending The Silmarillion from a godawful adaptation -- and I just don't see any way to do it well. But there will be many who disagree, and if it has to be done, a TV series format might be the least-worst way. (See https://mythgard.org/silmfilm/, which has been treating it as an intellectual exercise for several years.)

There are many, many examples of places where depth of character especially was lost in the translation. Some of this was obviously a matter of limited screentime, but other things were done badly that would have taken very little or no extra time to do right. One big example is Eowyn's showdown with the witch king, see this article:

https://www.themarysue.com/the-story-of-eowyn/

But even apart from that, when such huge chunks of screentime were devoted to these epic battle scenes, you do get the sense that the priorities at the top level were not quite aligned to what was in the book. Even compared to the 1981 BBC radio play (13 hours total), you feel like the movies missed a lot of good stuff.

IMO, to whatever extent the reverence exists, it is unjustified. The films are about as good as one can reasonably expect from big budget blockbusters, but to me they are somewhere between mediocre and merely decent cinema, with bombastic manipulative music, jarringly incongruent moments of lowbrow humor, lots of very fake-looking CGI, over-the-top almost comedically grotesque orcs, cheaply emptionally manipulative scenes like the Gondorian charge against Osgiliath, etc. They also have many good moments and many good filming decisions, but I wouldn't hold them up anywhere near the pinnacle of cinema. Don't get me wrong, I think that the books have many flaws too, although I like them a lot. I wouldn't say the books, good as they are, are at the pinnacle of literature either, although they may certainy be near the pinnacle of worldbuilding and are, I think, much much better than the films.

Aw, c'mon. New Zealand is beautiful.

I read that as Christopher Walken has died

on hacker news, we STEM lords (of ring 0?) like to examine both sides of every issue, right guys? Guys?

I'm sure he was a nice man, and I'm sure you've all derived a lot of pleasure from time spent with his work, much like so many engineers over the years have spent so much time and earned so much of their livings from FORTRAN and COBOL. Because, it must be said, FORTRAN and COBOL are to Computer Science as Lord of the Rings is to English Literature.

So I hope this man rests in blissful peace as earnestly as I could wish it of any good man. But let me go even further and say, if it turns out that if after we pass instead of sleep we are instead subjected to involuntary cage-fighting in our area of expertise, I earnestly hope that this nice man is not put in the cage with the recently departed literary critic and scholar Harold Bloom, may he also rest in peace having left us a cultural hole that's more than 6 feet in every dimension, but not as big as the "new ones" he and his friends tore in Lord of the Rings.

[and lest you think I'm just being snarky, there's plenty of trash genre porn that I enjoy, I just don't exalt it. Quick quiz: who was the only credible protagonist in Lord of the Rings? answer after the jump]

Sam.

Thank you! no.

The answer is Gollum. He's the only character who undergoes character development. It's a tragedy, where early he is confronted with choice and he is blind to the mistake he makes due to his personal weakness, and suffers the consequences and realizes, but too late, the error of his ways. Compare him (favorably) to King Lear, or Hamlet, or Oedipus, etc.

The other characters are essentially finger puppets, they have "a nature", a personality, but they don't change, it's just "and then this happens (but I don't actually change) and then this happens (and I don't actually change) and this happened (don't worry, I'm still the same old me you are comfortable with)". These are sidekicks, these are comic book characters.

The richer human qualities of character development are what we can identify with as we look back at our lives and recognize our own growth, our own change, and the importance of setting aside our weaknesses in favor of larger themes of living up to our better selves.

What makes Lord of the Rings weak as literature is that it wasn't written centered around its most interesting character, Gollum.

Tolkien does not fit the mold of the modern psychological-realist novel with its fixation on the inner lives of its characters. His most important literary precursor is probably Beowulf.

Simplistic formulas (character development = good), deployed like apotropaic amulets in the conveyor-belt writing of culture-industry hacks, are a poor attempt to reduce literary worth to an objective, analyzable and thus reproducible phenomenon—"good writing in a bottle". The polarity of description and prescription has been reversed.

You know he didn't write Lord of the Rings, right? You're either really reaching for a way to be contrarian or your whole knowledge of the series is just borrowed opinions from critics.

or I actually have taste in literature, and just because you enjoy something doesn't mean you know all there is to know about it? Huge numbers of people love McDonalds and "better" fast food burgers like Five Guys or In-and-Out. It's not "contrarian" or "borrowed opinion" to be one of the smaller number of people who have higher standards than that.

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