Saruman by John Howe. Christopher Lee has precisely one line in the recent trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, but his little cameo was an unsurprising winner with fans. And, apart from reinforcing that stuff is always better with Chris Lee (maybe Chris can do all the voices for BOTFA — that would be ace!), it also sparked a surprising amount of speculation about Saruman’s intentions in desiring to confront Sauron alone.
Now, we can’t say how the confrontation occurred in canon: we know little more than that the White Council put forth its strength, that Saruman played an important role, and that Sauron deliberately withdrew as he had anticipated and planned for the actions of the Wise. Had Sauron, in fact, already fled? It’s a legitimate interpretation of the texts. However, Tolkien’s writings are a lot more informative about when Saruman “left the path of wisdom”. In this feature, Tedoras examines what The Lord of the Rings, Unfinished Tales, and The Silmarillion have to tell us about Saruman’s fall.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Our friends over El Anillo Unico have assembled this outstanding analysis of the content of The Battle of the Five Armies preview that you can find in Appendix 9 of The Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition.
We’re delighted to be able to bring you a full English translation of their thoughts and speculation. Note: any mistakes or errors are mine, not theirs.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Well, the trailer is here! And I think we can all agree that it was well worth the wait. Quickly, here are twelve moments from it that really knocked our socks off!
The usual warning for spoilers, speculation and analysis goes here.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Over at The Guardian, Sarah Crown discusses why she rates Sauron in The Lord of the Rings as the most frightening and enduring villain of all literature.
I think there could be something to this. I recall vividly just how much Sauron’s unseen — yet uncannily tangible — menace frightened me as a teenager reading The Fellowship of the Ring late into the night, especially whenever I reached the following passage from The Mirror of Galadriel.
But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew. until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.
Then the Eye began to rove, searching this way and that; and Frodo knew with certainty and horror that among the many things that it sought he himself was one.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Over at Entertainment Weekly, writer Darren Franich is arguing that The Walking Dead is beginning to morph into a fantasy (or has been one all along) … specifically high-fantasy of the style of The Lord of the Rings.
I don’t watch TWD (or much telly at all) so I’m going to have to let you all argue this one out yourselves. But the one point I will make is that, if you buy that stuff about there only being seven fundamental plot archetypes, you’re bound to get a certain level of resemblance between any two works. Now, I’ll get out of the road and let Darren have his say… Continue reading “EW proposes The Walking Dead mirrors The Lord of the Rings”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
In our latest Library piece, TORn feature writer Tedoras delves deep into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth to examine what we really know about Thranduil, the Sindarin lord of Mirkwood — a realm largely populated by Silvan elves. How does this make him different? What were the big influences in his political vision for his people? What, in essence, makes him tick?
It’s good stuff, and inadvertently, it’s almost a companion piece to my own musings on Thranduil’s strongest character traits from earlier this year.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Over at The Guardian, Sarah Crown discusses why she rates Sauron in The Lord of the Rings as the most frightening and enduring villain of all literature. 
Over at Entertainment Weekly, writer Darren Franich is arguing that The Walking Dead is beginning to morph into a fantasy (or has been one all along) … specifically high-fantasy of the style of The Lord of the Rings. 
In our latest Library piece, TORn feature writer Tedoras delves deep into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth to examine what we really know about Thranduil, the Sindarin lord of Mirkwood — a realm largely populated by Silvan elves. How does this make him different? What were the big influences in his political vision for his people? What, in essence, makes him tick?