W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

Spoilers

I guess the main wizard is to gandalf what homelander is to Superman? Like, what if he were more self-interested?

I also didn't like how they didn't resolve Logan's story. I guess I'm supposed to read another trilogy to figure it out.

> Tolkien didn't like allegories and insisted that the ring wasn't symbolic of anything

The former is true, the latter is not:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37205904

Here you go.[0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_boomer

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/baby-boome...

The return of Gandalf never much bothered me, it fit well enough.

Ex deus is cheap

That's comic book logic.

Boromir's death was far better plotwise.

"Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Elsewhere:

"... the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it ..."

At the same time, there is a certain type of curious, intelligent, often young reader that delights in those details. They want to know more about that character who spoke two sentences but made a big impression; they want to know how the neighbourhood the protagonist walked through came to be so peculiar.

The market for massive 18-book series is a product of the happy match of that type of writer with that type of reader. But it's totally OK to not be that type of reader.

Beowulf’s already a brave badass at the beginning, and that doesn’t change, nor does he waver or second-guess his course or duty.

Like how they’ll never stop making Willy Wonkas or Alice in Wonderlands, and each gets increasingly painful.

I think the thing that really "solved" it for me was realizing that the vast majority of the people who watch LotR will never read the book, let alone the Silmarillion. And those who DO decide to read those after seeing the movie - the movie won't destroy it for them.

Presumably Amazon decided on an original prequel series for reasons; perhaps that they didn't see a need for an LOTR series after the Peter Jackson films (and other adaptations), or perhaps there were rights/exclusivity issues.

I found the first season of Rings of Power visually stunning, and some of the characters and environments were appealing as well, but it's hard to beat the original material. On the other hand, I feel like Wheel of Time could turn out great by cherry-picking the best parts of its source material.

I’m in the camp that the quality and faithfulness in Peter Jackson’s movies were an insanely improbable miracle—lightning in a bottle that we should be thankful happened once and you could never hope to capture again. But I’m still flabbergasted at the decision to make the ghost army omnipotent. They were so thoughtful with everything else, especially the changes they made—you can see this clearly in the behind-the-scenes discussion. So what in the world happened here?

In the books, Faramir was pretty much the one redeemable part of the house of stewards. Yes, the ring may be tempting, but I think that was already sufficiently shown throughout earlier moments in the movies and there was no need to throw Faramir under the bus. He was already a relatively minor character in the books, why do him dirty like that? Everyone, both the characters in the book and the readers outside the book, looked up to him. One of his men broke a rule (punishable by death) to save him in the books and from the context you can imagine most of his reports would have done the same, but if all you knew of him was what you saw in the movies, it gives a very different impression. He came around in the end but at the very least he should have done the right thing sooner than he did in the movies.

As far as the Sam (and Frodo) thing goes, admittedly it's been a year or two since the last time I read the trilogy and it's easy to confuse the books/movie in my memory, but I don't remember seeing any signs of contention between them the way it was shown in the movie, and certainly if there was, it was not even close to the same degree. Among other things, I think the movie was trying to show the darker side of the ring's effects, but again, it's already been shown multiple times throughout the movies and they just went overboard with it. Frodo pretty much had the highest trust for Sam (even in the movies this is basically true outside this incident), and would Sam really give up and abandon Frodo that easily because of a few crumbs? Tangentially, I don't remember Sam being particularly cruel to gollum in the books, and that's really the root of this breach of trust in the movies. That entire aspect of Sam shouldn't have been there to begin with, and if it wasn't, the staircase scene would also make no sense to show that way.

The reason I find these two particularly inexcusable is that I simply don't see how they added much to the movies in terms of story or character development. There's an argument for it but it's just weak imo, Tolkien had it figured out just fine thank you very much. I also don't see how it would have helped in terms of budget, reducing film length, etc. I can excuse other omissions or slightly weird things if there are budget/time constraints, you can't reasonably ask for the impossible, I just don't see it in those two cases.

Let's put the ring into context. Imagine you were walking along and you came across an ordinary looking smartphone. Amazingly it works and you can make calls on it. Anywhere in the world. For free!

That's not bad. But it turns out this phone has a dangerous superpower. For, you see, Stalin developed missile guidance before the Americans and leaked the details. But there's a back door and this phone you hold in your hand is the key to it all. With the right knowledge, this phone could launch any missile from any country at any time. The phone has a primitive AI which attempts to phone home every now and then but no-one has answered it for years.

And here's the kicker: Stalin is still alive! Barely. Now just a disembodied brain in a vat hidden somewhere deep in Russia. And he wants his device back now that there's a massive arsenal for him to command.

Every agency in the world wants to get their hands on this thing. But you've got to somehow get it into the Kremlin so it can be plugged in to some ancient terminal and deactivated. But you’re not alone. Oh yes, you’ll have some help from a few random individuals who represent various interests, have a few fighting moves and are pretty good at keeping you hidden but without having any authority to make stuff happen for you on your journey.

So that's the position the Fellowship find themselves in. Does the film manage to convey any of this? No.

Moving on, the way the information is surrendered to the reader in the books is much more gradual than the film. In the books, Gandalf is the reader's and the hobbits' touchstone. When he's away the reader has no clue what's happening and it's not until the hobbits get to Rivendell -- after many close shaves -- that the full details are finally revealed.

Not so in the film: Galadriel narrates the whole thing before the opening credits!

This ruins the film twice over: Gandalf becomes redundant, reduced to opening the door to Moria and taking on the balrog. Thanks to the magic of cinema, the director teleports us everywhere so that we can witness Gandalf battling Saruman. Gandalf battling the necromancer. Gandalf battling the balrog. Instead of us learning all this from Gandalf himself after he reappears suddenly later on.

And Galadriel, the mightiest elf in middle earth, has had her grand entrance already: right at the start, as a voice over.

For me, the hobbit who undergoes the biggest Hero's Journey is Pippin. He starts out as a carefree young hobbit and comes back to lead the Shire in the uprising against Saruman. Again, the film chose to ignore this pretty decent character arc in favour of a bunch of CGI effects.

Visually, the films are great. It's a shame the screenplay is utter drivel.

"Perfection" really isn't the right concept here. The Silmarillion is not perfectly written. It also isn't adequately written.