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!
HBO is airing a fantasy series in two weeks staring LOTR alumn Sean Bean. Just as in 2000, when New Line Cinema put high-quality fantasy in the cinema, viewed then as an expensive risk, the subscription channel is adapting a fantasy novel, George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones,” for television. Bean, Boromir in Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring,” is front and center here as the series’ most recognizable face playing Eddard Stark, one of the powerful players in a land full of political intrigue. Sunday night HBO started the two-week countdown before the shows airs each Sunday for 10 weeks. You can watch a 14-minute preview now but younger and sensitive viewers should be warned, there are graphic depictions of dead bodies, a beheading and the stuff of nightmares if you follow this link. (TORn recently ran a story comparing the LOTR films and the television series.)
(Note: This story appears on both: www.Winter-is-Coming.net and www.TheOneRing.net)
Remember a decade ago when the world was going to end? Younger readers may not clearly recall, but a computer glitch dubbed “Y2K” (the date changing from 1999 to 2000 on January 1) was going to throw computers and thus the world into complete chaos. Planes were going to fall from the sky, bank accounts were going to reset while bankrupting corporations, energy sources were going to fail and missiles would launch and plunge the world into nuclear holocaust.
And worst of all, what if TheOneRing.net wasn’t available when I got to work and opened my browser? What if I couldn’t keep up with the latest news tidbit about the Peter Jackson team working on three “Lord of the Rings Films” by reading the fan site dubbed TORn (for brevity). I wasn’t obsessed, I was focused.
Winter-Is-Coming.net has taken me back to those days like a time capsule. That site, like TORn, is reporting daily on the minutia of a fantasy story told, in what I hope is grand fashion. Once again, like so many others, I have found myself checking in each day, following the tiniest details and I have been transported back to those days of eager anticipation when it seemed the world, as we know it, might end. Continue reading “WIC and TORn fan sites party like its 1999”
LOTR vet Sean Bean is heading back into the realm of epic fantasy as one of the central characters in an HBO series, “A Game of Thrones.” Last night the pay-for-play network unveiled an 11-minute commercial preview for the series which has fans all excited and reminds some of us around here of the good old days when “Fellowship of the Ring” was getting close to its release date.
Bean plays a pretty significant part in the series, talked about by the “R.R.” author who is still living and appears in the video along with Bean himself, seen below. And to follow day-to-day news of the production, you can check out winter-is-coming.net
Sean Bean is set to star in a big-budget HBO adaptation of a series of fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin. Bean, familiar to TORn readers as Boromir in the LOTR movie trilogy, will play the role of Ned Stark, one of the leads and one of characters playing the titular “Game of Thrones.” The series is currently in production and premiers in 2011 with the newest teaser which includes footage of Bean below. For a little further information, you can also click here to see a behind-the-scenes segment featuring Bean.
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.
