Often, when a lengthy discussion of the Hobbit films takes place, someone asks “What about the other books? What about material from The Silmarillion, or Unfinished Tales? Will these be adapted to the big screen?”
The answer to this question is a simple one. As it stands, the literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, his son, Christopher Tolkien, has refused to consider any further licensing of his father’s work for cinematic purposes.
Many fans are quite frustrated by this state of affairs. They know there is interesting material contained in these other sources, such as the well-known “Quest for Erebor.” That one short work alone would illuminate in key ways the motivations and decisions of principal characters in the films. (For the curious, the Quest for Erebor may be found in a shortened form in “Unfinished Tales”, and in a fuller form in the revised edition of Douglas Anderson’s “Annotated Hobbit.”) Continue reading “Concerning Christopher – An Essay on Tolkien’s Son’s Decision to Not Allow Further Cinematic Licensing of His Work”
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Even the word itself, spoiler, comes with connotations of bad. Reminders of food that’s gone off. Anything that spoils entails less enjoyment, not the same amount. And certainly not more. Or so it’s traditionally held.
To which I say, to use a quaint British phrase, “pish and tosh”.
Not because I don’t think it’s impossible for there to be spoilers with an adaptation of a novel that was first published in 1937. There are. Continue reading “In defence of spoilers”
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The Hobbit would be better subtitled ‘Great Expectations’ rather than ‘An Unexpected Journey’, given the spectacular triple-act it follows, and the accumulated anticipation in the near decade since the Oscar-sweeping The Return of the King. This presents a problem for judging the film, for we are none of us objective. Comparisons with the original trilogy are inevitable, and thus before we even look at the intrinsic merits of the latest addition to Jackson’s Middle-earth adaptations, we need to be aware of how much we take for granted in coming to this new trilogy, and thus how our critical faculties are skewed. Continue reading “Thomas Monteath critiques An Unexpected Journey”
Readers who are skeptical after seeing the title of this piece have a right to be. English professors have been known to find all sorts of things in books which the authors never put there. In addition, at first glance Middle-earth seems a particularly non-religious place. We find no mention of God in The Hobbit, no prayers, Bibles, churches, priests, or ministers — none of the things typically associated with the Christian faith.
Fans also know Tolkien was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and that his writings were influenced by the myths of Northern Europe which he and his friend, C. S. Lewis, loved to read aloud with the circle of friends that later grew into their famous writing group, the Inklings.
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.
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.
Back in October, New Zealand Post announced that they would mint special-issue gold coins as a tie-in with Jackson’s The Hobbit. The press release stated:
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.
I haven’t yet seen The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but what I’ve seen and read of the White Council sequence has intrigued me. 