With the sixth season of The HBO series Game of Thrones just around the corner, are comparisons between it and The Lord of the Rings inevitable? The Irish Times seems to think so. In this provocative article, author Ed Power explores the irresistible urge of some fans to rank them against each other.
“Central to the whispering campaign against Tolkien is the idea that he peddled a reductive world view. While George RR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire sequence is regarded as mature, complex and reflective of real human life, Lord of The Rings is felt to be fusty, puritanical and cheesily moralistic. Nobody in Game of Thrones is truly good or bad”
The Lord of the Rings is cheesy and puritanical? Oh dear. Of course, devoted fans of J.R.R. Tolkien would never describe it that way, but devoted fans of George R.R. Martin (who haven’t read LOTR?) might – and some apparently do. Can Jaime Lannister hold a candle to Aragorn, or vice versa? Are Gollum, Eowyn or John Snow one-dimensional?
As a devoted fan of both (yes, it’s quite possible), I personally think that the difference between the two is a good thing. Both approaches can be enormously entertaining, cringe-worthy at times, yet pierce the heart with both beauty and tragedy. What about you? Do you have a preference or do you enjoy both? Read the full article, and let us know!
Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” turns 15 years old this year and the Newport Beach Film Festival in Southern California is planning a fun little celebration next week. In fact, I’m quite sure TheOneRing.net will be celebrating this fact all year long at various events. Anyhow, if the FOTR Anniversary screening goes well, the Festival will host one for The Two Towers next year, and again in 2018 for The Return of the King.
On Sunday, April 24 there will be a full afternoon of Tolkien fun, starting first with a lunchtime Moot at the Corner Bakery Cafe at 1621 W. Sunflower Ave in Santa Ana. This is in a little shopping center across the street from the theater and very near to the South Coast Plaza. There will be some opportunity for fun and games at 2pm over at the theater where we plan on having our Barrel and backdrop for photo ops, some trivia and most importantly, a costume contest. Below is a little timeline to help you organize your day.
*Moot – Noontime till 2pm at the Corner Bakery Cafe
*Line Party fun – 2pm till 3pm – Regency South Coast Village theater
*Film – 3pm start, should finish around 6:30pm or so
Normally, a retrospective film like this only costs $5 per person and tickets can be purchased at the Film Festival website, but TheOneRing.net has secured a Barrel full of Tickets to share with local fans, especially those in costume.
All you have to do to secure a pair of tickets is email me at garfeimao@TheOneRing.net and tell me what costume you plan to wear. It can be a full on fancy costume with prosthetics, or a costume lite variation, or even a mash-up or gender bender, anything even remotely Tolkien related, including Tolkien himself. After all, not only will there will be a costume contest, but really, who needs an excuse like a free ticket or prize to wear a costume, don’t we all live for this?
One note, for those of you with costumes that have weaponry or large accessories, you can wear that for the contest, and then it must be returned to your car before entering the theater for the film.
Costumed attendees, or those with a companion in costume should RSVP to me by Monday at noon. If we still have tickets left after that, I will open it up to those who do not wish to wear a costume. All updates and announcements will be made on our Facebook Event page.
So come join TheOneRing.net and a load of local Tolkien fans at what should be a lovely day at the theater.
A complete tale of the War of the Last Alliance is a tantalising prospect. Yet, all the information we have available comes from fragments scattered over a number of books. The following post attempts to reconstruct the entire account as written Tolkien himself Continue reading “The Tale of the War of the Last Alliance”
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.
Welcome to our latest Library feature, in which Benita J Prins discusses the belief that Tolkien characters are either totally good, or totally bad, and therefore his characterizations are two-dimensional. She shows that Tolkien did, in fact, write characters that aren’t good, but aren’t entirely bad, and they appear in all of his works.
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.
TORn’s staff and our readers know from experience that Tolkien fans can sometimes be found in surprising places. So, imagine our delight when we learned through this Washington Post story that there aren’t just Tolkien fans on the Washington D.C NFL team, quotes from The Lord of the Rings are regularly heard in the locker room and even on the playing field!
The board was set, the pieces were moving, and victory was in hand, but Kirk Cousins needed a little help with his lines.
“Is it the third day or the fifth day you’ve got to look to the East?” Cousins asked teammate Tom Compton on the FedEx Field sidelines, as the clock counted down Washington’s triumph over the Bills.
Compton grimaced at the memory, still aghast that his quarterback would need to ask.
“I was like, ‘It’s the fifth day, bro,” Compton recalled. “Like, c’mon.”
Information secured, Cousins delivered the lines that welcomed the world into his team’s growing “Lord of the Rings” fascination.
“Today, the gray became the white,” Cousins announced, as they closed in on a division championship. “We look to the East.” Read more…
Note: out of respect for our Native American readers (and non-readers) a word that is viewed by many as a racial slur has been removed from the headline and body of this article. We overlooked that in our attempt to reword the headline of the source article. We’d like to apologize to any of our readers who might have been offended, and encourage everyone to focus on the true intent of linking to the story which was to highlight how Tolkien fandom helps us all transcend labels and brings us together as a community, sometimes in the most unlooked for ways.
With the sixth season of The HBO series Game of Thrones just around the corner, are comparisons between it and The Lord of the Rings inevitable? The Irish Times seems to think so. In this provocative article, author Ed Power explores the irresistible urge of some fans to rank them against each other.
Welcome to our latest Library feature, in which Benita J Prins discusses the belief that Tolkien characters are either totally good, or totally bad, and therefore his characterizations are two-dimensional. She shows that Tolkien did, in fact, write characters that aren’t good, but aren’t entirely bad, and they appear in all of his works.