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What have the last 15 years of big-screen Tolkien meant to you?


Dixon Hill

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I read the books while 12-13 and not re-read them since (apart from select chapters). They were really enjoyable at that age and I was devouring those with increasing speed.

The first film I watched 5 times on big screen, the second one 3 times and the third - 4 times. Strangely, I was never a massive fan but those but they seem to inspire group viewing with friends. I think there wasn't a single showing of those that I went to on my own. And that hasn't changed. And in that entertainment factor, they were what prequels never could be. I didn't care much for An Unexpected Journey but enjoyed The Desolation of Smaug more (with all its deficiencies). Let's see if this trend continues (we'll find out in about in 6 days 1 hour and 45 minutes).

As for Shore's music, I bought the album randomly in the same week when I bought first Harry Potter soundtrack. And I enjoyed both but soon the obsessiveness towards Middle Earth music turned me against them somewhat. The Two Towers I always enjoyed more for its variety (at least on OST) and The Return of the King album never matched those heights (apart from some moments). The CR for the first film was essential, the next one didn't inspire many listens initially, same with the third. But, over years, I've grown to appreciate them more. The new scores I really like - all three of them.

Karol

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I like it very much. Won't say that it's the best music Howard Shore has ever composed but I get a real kick from listening to (quite lengthy) soundtrack album. In that sense, it's my favourite release in the series. Although, this new one flows just as well, if not better. We'll see if that impression will be a lasting one.

And, again, I'm not talking about composition/"ultimate pantheon of awesomeness" sort of things. Just my own listening pleasure.

Karol

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

It might seem like a slightly tired subject on this board so I don't really talk about it all that much any more. I've been listening to this really frequently over the past three months and it might be one of my favourite Howard Shore scores ever.

Howard Shore - The Desolation of Smaug

Still loving this after all these months. Literally haven't gotten tired of it despite constant, repeated listens.

Listened to the complete album yesterday and today as well. Might be one of my favourite Howard Shore scores.

!

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The first trilogy is one of the greatest filmic trilogies ever (scores as well). I saw the first Hobbit in theatres, and haven't yet seen the second. I'm very surprised to find myself so uninterested in the second trilogy.

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I like it very much. Won't say that it's the best music Howard Shore has ever composed but I get a real kick from listening to (quite lengthy) soundtrack album. In that sense, it's my favourite release in the series. Although, this new one flows just as well, if not better. We'll see if that impression will be a lasting one.

And, again, I'm not talking about composition/"ultimate pantheon of awesomeness" sort of things. Just my own listening pleasure.

Karol

I tend to agree with that. DoS has a wholesomeness to it, and it does feel the most like travelogue and storytelling of the three.

Also, and I know not many will agree, for me, the album presentations of the three scores have a clarity in development and structure that feels just as natural as LotR.

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Except for the endings seem a bit abrupt with the disconnect between the scores and their songs. (not counting the End Credit cues)

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I think the analogy to Star Wars in my case relates more to the whole film event spectacle which Lord of the Rings films were for me. I had missed out on the previous ones entirely. My own experience with Tolkien began when I was 11 and noticed the comics made of the Bakshi animated film at my cousin's house. During the same visit I chanced upon David Day's encyclopedia called Tolkien's World in my cousin's bookshelf, which had the most varied and colorful illustrations that set my imagination on fire even though I did not make the connection to the comic I had just read. Both intrigued me, a lover of fantasy at that age and maybe a year later I read Lord of the Rings, in wrong order largely due to the fact our local library didn't have the FotR or TTT in their collection at the time I borrowed Return of the King. So it was a kind of strange experience to have this backward first read of the novel but I did it. The Finnish translation, the only one in existence, so definitive it is considered, by Kersti Juva is a masterful achievement as I have later done some comparisons to the English original, capturing Tolkien's spirit but being very inventive and linguistically rich. Later I re-read the book with voracious appetite. It appealed at that age to my imagination with sense of adventure, interesting characters and a vivid world with feel of antiquity. I was very much a fan of Hobbits and their lifestyle as well.

Then I explored Hobbit the novel, got into roleplaying games and started to take imaginary trips to Middle Earth with friends through different games, telling stories much in the vein of Lord of the Rings, just smaller in scale. Silmarillion followed when I was 14 or 15 which I absolutely adored. I had bought the very same David Day encyclopedia Tolkien's World so I had a smattering of knowledge of the Elder Days so reading Silmarillion was easier as I had some of the basics, characters etc. already memorized from perusing that small encyclopedia. Mostly that left me with strong visual memories and some of those illustrations stayed me for years, printed on my memory as the very definition of characters, events and places in Tolkien's stories. The Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion and The Hobbit were my bibles in my youth and I must have read them countless times, in full and in part. The whole world felt very real to me, tangible and with a sense of time and place. There was a sense of familiarity that John Howe has been keen to note, Tolkien's creation linked so powerfully to our own reality but still separate and that how it felt to me and is why it appeals to so many. There is also a deep purely aesthetic appeal to his work and Lord of the Rings was the first book that truly taught me the power of written word, poetry and prose and where I actively noted such things as literary style and its changes. Again the art of the book covers (other than Finnish minimalistic awful ones) also led me to appreciate art more keenly and I noted the images by John Howe for the first time. I still have my battered paperback of Lord of the Rings with Howe's perfectly portrayed Gandalf striding through the rainy green landscape. Many other illustrators followed as did a more general interest in art. In time I began to read Tolkien's works in English, read enormous amount of roleplaying game material written about Tolkien's world (some more faithful to his vision, some less) and as I grew older I began to see the different layers of it and how it rewarded further reading as every time I found something new or rediscovered something in those pages I had forgotten. And this fascination with his work continues to this day in various forms and I have read just about everything Tolkien has ever published on his legendarium (and other works for that matter). I can't say my interest or love for Tolkien is diminished, it just changes shape and direction ever so subtly through as the years wane on. The effect of his work on me and my life is immeasurable and I would not be the person I am today without his works.

The films are an ancillary and secondary to the novels to me and will always be. My mental images of the story will always be those I formed prior to seeing the film and a rare few have been replaced by anything from the films, John Howe's Barad-dûr and Alan Lee's Orthanc might be the most specific things that exceeded my own imagination. But the Lord of the Rings films with their relatively minor flaws remain some of the most breathtaking cinematic experiences of my life. The Hobbit films are a mere footnote in comparison, a slightly limping lesser cousin who I appreciate for shedding light on some few and far between visions of greatness in an otherwise lesser trilogy of movies.

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I loved the entire first part of [AUJ] (which many claim to be overlong, slowly paced and inconsequential).

Yeah, the Bag End segment is my favourite segment of the film so far with the exception of Bilbo's conversation with Smaug. I think a lot of the criticism of its length is rather unfair.

I watched Star Wars rather late, around 95

Wow, that is a late age...

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My mental images of the story will always be those I formed prior to seeing the film and a rare few have been replaced by anything from the films, John Howe's Barad-dûr and Alan Lee's Orthanc might be the most specific things that exceeded my own imagination.

That's something I wanted to mention and didn't, for all my long rambling. Generally, my own images when reading a novel are rather spotty... I have very rough images of some characters and scenes and more clear ones of others - and those sometimes don't really match the written descriptions (especially concerning characters' looks and clothing). For example, in the Harry Potter films, Hermione, though not entirely faithful to her description in the books, looks much more accurate than the image I had of her when reading (where, for whatever reason, she looked like Susie from Calvin and Hobbes).

My original images of LOTR were undoubtedly influenced by the Bakshi film, though that of course doesn't cover the second half of the novel, and I believe a lot of that still changed further while I was reading. And while I'm sure some images have been influenced by the PJ films, as a whole I still think of LOTR the same way I always have, with the same images I imagined 20 years ago.

And a few of them are instances where, for all the films accomplished, they can't match what I see when I read the books. Both Pippin's view of the Pelennor battle and Gandalf's Doom announcement at the Morannon are much more powerful (and, in my mind's eye, perfectly cinematic) the way Tolkien wrote them.

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My mental images of the story will always be those I formed prior to seeing the film and a rare few have been replaced by anything from the films, John Howe's Barad-dûr and Alan Lee's Orthanc might be the most specific things that exceeded my own imagination.

That's something I wanted to mention and didn't, for all my long rambling. Generally, my own images when reading a novel are rather spotty... I have very rough images of some characters and scenes and more clear ones of others - and those sometimes don't really match the written descriptions (especially concerning characters' looks and clothing). For example, in the Harry Potter films, Hermione, though not entirely faithful to her description in the books, looks much more accurate than the image I had of her when reading (where, for whatever reason, she looked like Susie from Calvin and Hobbes).

My original images of LOTR were undoubtedly influenced by the Bakshi film, though that of course doesn't cover the second half of the novel, and I believe a lot of that still changed further while I was reading. And while I'm sure some images have been influenced by the PJ films, as a whole I still think of LOTR the same way I always have, with the same images I imagined 20 years ago.

And a few of them are instances where, for all the films accomplished, they can't match what I see when I read the books. Both Pippin's view of the Pelennor battle and Gandalf's Doom announcement at the Morannon are much more powerful (and, in my mind's eye, perfectly cinematic) the way Tolkien wrote them.

I have seen so many visual interpretations before the movies on the appearance of characters and places by various artists, but one of the reasons I was sold on the LotR films was that they had Alan Lee and especially John Howe as concept artists. A lot of what we are seeing in those films comes from their visual imagination, imagination and style I had admired for a long time prior to the film. I think something like the destruction of Mount Doom was also one thing I could not have imagined in such splendour. Destruction of Mordor yes, but the sheer fireworks display of the exploding mountain and Sammath Naur and the eagles were always hazy in my visual imagination. Sometimes seeing something visualized in a concrete way in front of you is more effective than that hazy image you have in your mind of a character or action or a landscape or a building. The films captured some of these iconic scenes to near perfection in comparison with my own vision. And then again some never quite reached the lofty heights I had imagined in my head. But majority of it felt familiar and acceptable as a passable interpretation. It sounds like faint praise but they did more things right than wrong with these films considering they are adaptations of a dense 1000 page novel. Curiously not so much in Hobbit and the same people were responsible for the visual look of those films, even more firmly than in LotR.

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Now that was a write-up. I found it interesting, Marian, how much your experiences and attitudes toward Tolkien's works reflect my own. In particular:

I'd been living the books for nearly a decade; between readings, I used to feel a sort of home sickness for Middle-earth. "The road goes ever on" in particular captures my feelings about LOTR, or my emotional state when reading it, pretty well.

You put into words here something that I've always felt, but never articulated so well and accurately as this. In a way, the sensation between readings is like remembering another life, a faded memory of something you took part in yourself but recall mostly in occasional, vivid flashes. (Probably stems from PTSD after the long haul through Mordor.) I've never been able to stay away from that world for too long.

TTT had some more flaws, though most of them were fixed in the EE (I love all three EEs, but I consider TTT's to be the most essential by far). ROTK has the most (and the EE adds several more), and some of them really bother me, but at the same time it has the culmination of the story in all its facets. For that reason alone, I don't think I could ever put FOTR above it, as many seem to do. I also never understand the criticism about its supposed multiple endings.

Interesting. Apparently I've missed something, because I'm not aware of these criticisms. What "multiple endings" is this referring to?

The Finnish translation, the only one in existence, so definitive it is considered, by Kersti Juva is a masterful achievement as I have later done some comparisons to the English original, capturing Tolkien's spirit but being very inventive and linguistically rich.

Pity that Tolkien couldn't do the Finnish translation himself. That was, of course, the language that started it all for him at a young age, and he was fluent in it by the time he wrote the book. (One has to wonder if that's the reason it translated so well. . . .)

I had bought the very same David Day encyclopedia Tolkien's World so I had a smattering of knowledge of the Elder Days so reading Silmarillion was easier as I had some of the basics, characters etc. already memorized from perusing that small encyclopedia. Mostly that left me with strong visual memories and some of those illustrations stayed me for years, printed on my memory as the very definition of characters, events and places in Tolkien's stories.

Funny—I never really liked the David Day illustrations myself. But then, I used to have some issues with Alan Lee's work, too (although I think he was magnificent for the films). I think that goes back to how stark the impression of Tolkien's world is on each of us in our own way. As I said above, we remember our experiences in Middle Earth so well that someone else's representations will always be a pale shadow of the "reality" we saw in our mind's eye.

And a few of them are instances where, for all the films accomplished, they can't match what I see when I read the books.

No. They can't, really. It's like the difference between having lived through the battle of Fort Wagner during the Civil War, and then watching Glory. Sure, they did it justice with the tools they had to work with. But a fifteen minute sequence can't possibly match the event itself. And even a ten-hour stretch of cinematic Tolkien can't quite measure up to the way it really happened (though, as Inky said, there were times when they got it damn close).

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TTT had some more flaws, though most of them were fixed in the EE (I love all three EEs, but I consider TTT's to be the most essential by far). ROTK has the most (and the EE adds several more), and some of them really bother me, but at the same time it has the culmination of the story in all its facets. For that reason alone, I don't think I could ever put FOTR above it, as many seem to do. I also never understand the criticism about its supposed multiple endings.

Interesting. Apparently I've missed something, because I'm not aware of these criticisms. What "multiple endings" is this referring to?

You've never really heard those criticisms?

Anyway, these refer to the many "fade-to-black/white" moments at the end of ROTK: first during the End Of All Things sequence, when Frodo and Sam are surrounded by lava (yeah, some people actually thought the film could have ended here!), then when Frodo is "grabbed" by the Eagles, then when he sees Sam (when the Fellowship is reunited), then when the camera pulls away from Minas Tirith, then right after Sam's wedding, then after the Grey Havens scene...

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You mean . . . the multiple endings that were in the book? Nope. Missed out on all that whining. Can't call that regret, either. (Like you said: would these people have been happier if the story actually ended in any of those other places?)

It's ironic, too, when you consider the movie actually had fewer endings than the book, what with the scouring of the Shire missing.

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And it's not like any of those supposed fake endings ever felt like an ending to me. Perhaps with the exception of the Grey Havens, where I think it's appropriate. Sam coming home is like a brief epilogue (and I was indescribably happy that they did include that, and his final words).

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And these people just have a hard time understanding that the end of ROTK is not just the end of the story of the third film (this one ends at Minas Tirith, really), but the end of the whole trilogy, and as such, there is a lot to wrap up.

Actually, when you get right down to it, it's the end of the entire history of Middle Earth (Silmarillion and all). Now that's a lot to wrap up—surely enough to justify a few extra minutes of screen time, right?

Yep, and frankly, I can totally understand why PJ decided to cut that out (based on those complaints about "multiple endings"). Can you imagine if he had kept that in? People would have left the theater at that moment. Idiots!

Oh, I've always understood why he cut it out. When I first saw the movie, I was disappointed, but not surprised. They couldn't have added another 30 minutes at that point. (But you're right: keeping it in would really have rubbed those grumblers the wrong way. . . !)

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The Scouring of the Shire is an essential part of the story (in a way, it's the heart of it!), but it's really hard to pull it off in an adaptation (after you had that big "end of the world" moment at Mount Doom, and well, the world has been saved). I honestly don't see how any adaptation could pull that off in a way that would work for the average Joe (unless you'd downplay the events at Mount Doom and make the Scouring feel like a bigger deal somehow...).

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The Scouring of the Shire is an essential part of the story (in a way, it's the heart of it!), but it's really hard to pull it off in an adaptation (after you had that big "end of the world" moment at Mount Doom, and well, the world has been saved). I honestly don't see how any adaptation could pull that off in a way that would work for the average Joe (unless you'd downplay the events at Mount Doom and make the Scouring feel like a bigger deal somehow...).

I have to confess . . . that was the one part of the story I struggled with when I first read the book. Again, I was about 12 at the time, so the deeper issues escaped me; like one of those average Joes, I thought it was an odd, off-beat way to end the story. Of course, since the second reading on, it's become impossible to imagine the story without it. And Tolkien himself considered it a crucial episode—almost the reason for telling the whole saga in the first place.

But like you say, it's not hard to see why they left it out. It would've created a divide between the movie's viewers; purists like myself would've loved it, but people who didn't know the story would've hated it, leaving the movie to take a lot more criticism than was necessary. And, in a way, I don't really mind it in the long run. It gives us something to smile and nod knowingly about as we watch the end of ROTK. We know what really happened, don't we?

Sarcasm.

If you have to tell us . . . it didn't work.

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In the end, I think it's better to drop the Scouring than to drop the Grey Havens (which is apparently what the BBC radio adaptation did). To me, the Grey Havens sum up everything not just LOTR, but much of Sil and the other histories are about.

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And, in a way, I don't really mind it in the long run. It gives us something to smile and nod knowingly about as we watch the end of ROTK. We know what really happened, don't we?

Yeah. Let's just pretend that the transition from the shot of the Middle-Earth map to the Hobbits arriving in Hobbiton is an ellipsis, with the Scouring happening in between. ;)

You're not very good at it!

But thank God you are very good at it.

Irksomenss I mean.

Thanks. I do my best to keep it on a high level!

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The ellipsis only works in the theatrical version of ROTK where Saruman the White escapes Orthanc and makes his way north to scour the Shire. In the extended edition, we have to ponder whether Eru would resurrect his fallen body specifically for evil. And at what color, since the films overlook the Many Colors, Saruman the Clear?

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