Pellaeon

What were the encores?

Why don’t they call the movie ENSEMBLE

Not to mention they could mine the hell out of MERP.

A trilogy of movies for the three Great Tales seems likeliest, but if I had my way, it would be a movie (Beren and Lúthien) and then a TV series (covering Narn i Chîn Húrin, Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin, The Wanderings of Húrin, and The Nauglafring), and finally another movie (The Fall of Gondolin). With the possibility for a prequel movie (The Fall of the Noldor). As for the Amazon deal, from the news releases I saw it appears that: The license includes specifically the rights to The Lord of the Rings The show will explore storylines before The Fellowship of the Ring Which suggests to me that it will mine the Appendices. There are a lot of great storylines in the 20th c. TA—the rise of the Éothéod Northmen, the Wainrider Easterling invasion, the Fall of Arthedain (and of Angmar), the fall of Minas Ithil and the end of Anarion’s line, all of which are interconnected. And the waking of the Balrog, not as connected. Even more likely, though, if by ‘preceding The Fellowship of the Ring’ they mean more or less immediately, I would speculate that they will center it on Aragorn’s adventures in his youth, when, under the name of Thorongil, he fought for Gondor against the Corsairs of Umbar. Kind of a thin story to base a whole TV series on, but, if they really are going for a Game of Thrones type show—intrigue between human nations and houses, sex, sloooow buildup of the war, ignoring vast distances—then, they’ll want a humanocentric story based on Gondor but drawing in Arnor, Rohan, Umbar, Harad, and the Easterlings.

I see you are as wise in the ways of small talk as you are in matters of Williams’ scoring techniques.

One factor may be that movies became more fast-paced over the years. It’s all recitativo and no aria, no substantially long and dramatic scenes in which an idea can be contemplated for a time. How often have you heard people complain of Star Wars (’77) that there’s like a solid TEN MINUTES of droids crawling the desert? You don’t get that very much anymore. Hence if the composer wants to develop an idea, he has to do so outside the confines of the movie action. To turn this question on its head, I was with some people on Saturday who claimed they understood that JW only writes the main themes these days (we were talking about TFA), and has other people (his pupils, as they say in the classical world) handle the drudgery of adapting them scene-by-scene. I said I had never heard that this was the case, but, considering the TFA suites are sublime and the TFA score on a whole is a chore to listen to, I thought there might be some truth in it. You folks would know better.

Google "the problem with fan theories." YOU PEOPLE ARE the problem!!

Maybe it’s payback for when they used Leia’s theme for

I’m afraid he abandoned both long poems due to negative reader feedback. And I’m afraid audiences still shy from poetry. I was unhappy that the Beren and Lúthien standalone book turned out to consist mainly of the early prose ‘Tale of Tinúviel’ (which I like, but, it is emphatically not the definitive form of the story), though I understand. I myself prefer to read the prose and the poetic versions back-to-back. Ah well, we do have The Lays of Beleriand, so, nothing is lost. I could wish for a deluxe version, without editorial commentary (other than C.S. Lewis’s excellent critique!), someday. I will add that even Tolkien’s prose must to be read aloud to be properly appreciated, and that is something just not done today. A lot of the ‘hiking through nature’ bits which may seem somewhat dull and skippable (eg., ‘A Short Rest’ in The Hobbit, ‘The Ring Goes South’ in The Lord of the Rings, and yes, yes, yes the entirety of the masterpiece ‘Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin’) ARE indeed very much the point!

Have any of you read the poetic version of CoH? It is magnificent!

Interesting. Yes, and his appearance at the final battle is like Beren’s at Sarn Athrad.

Fascinating observation! Oh, well, considering he used Anglo-Saxon for the language of the Eorlingas, I’d say the parallel was intentional, at least on one level. And Minas Tirith could stand in for Númenor itself. Yes, it very nearly mirrors the journey he intended for the hero of The Lost Road. By the way, what do you mean “even Beorn”? He is one element for which I find no Silmarillion antecedent.

As I see it, The Lord of the Rings actually incorporates three separate ‘genres’ of Tolkien’s previous works: The Hobbit definitely draws heavily on the Silmarillion tradition, especially the ‘Beren and Lúthien’ material and the ‘Nauglafring’ story, to which you can almost say it is a sequel (there’s a hoard with a necklace and a jewel; dwarves and elves-in-a-cave-in-a-forest are fighting over it), but these connections, while substantial, are left vague, because Tolkien, while naturally mining his own material, didn’t mean for The Hobbit to actually be a part of the same mythology/canon. LOTR, of course, changed that, drawing directly on both and justifying the coexistence of both (with two Ages intervening). But the Second Age doesn’t come out of nowhere. There was a third and separate cycle devoted to a time travel epic known originally as The Lost Road. Again, this draws on the Silmarillion mythology without exactly justifying its coexistence with it. If you have read C.S. Lewis’s space travel trilogy, you may be aware that it arose out Tolkien and Lewis agreeing to tackle the time travel and space travel genres, respectively. Hence the various references to ‘Numinor’ in Lewis’s trilogy (and, incidentally, there is also a connection in The Magician’s Nephew, in which Atlantis is mentioned), and why Lewis’s hero is named Elwin (Ransom), a reference to Tolkien’s central character Ælfwine (from The Book of Lost Tales; also Alboin from The Lost Road and Alwin Lowdham from The Notion Club Papers). Also, in the definitive version of Tolkien’s time travel epic, The Notion Club Papers (published in Sauron Defeated), which I highly recommend, there are various references back to Lewis’s series. So, long story short, check out Sauron Defeated to see how this all plays out. Fascinating stuff in its own right. And needless to say it’s where LOTR ultimately got its Dúnedain kingdoms and much of its Second Age lore. Other great Second Age stories are found in Unfinished Tales and in The Peoples of Middle-earth (‘Tal-elmar’). On re-reads I do cobble together a ‘whole’ First Age. Although it is not exactly cohesive, it is very expansive and certainly enjoyable. LOST TALES “Ælfwine of England” from vol. II (pp. 312-22) The Book of Lost Tales, vol. I (complete) “The Tale of Tinúviel” from vol. II LATER WRITINGS “The Lay of Leithian” from vol. III The Children of Húrin (chs. 1-12 plus cut passages from UT) “Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin” from UT The Children of Húrin (ch. 13 through p. 257) “The Wanderings of Húrin” from vol. XI BACK TO LOST TALES “The Nauglafring” from vol. II (pp. 112-6; 221-42) “The Fall of Gondolin” from vol. II (starting from Tuor’s arrival) And frequently-read First Age materials outside the main stream include: “The Awaking of the Quendi” from XI (pp. 420-3) “Finwë and Miriel” from X “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth” from X “The Lay of the Children of Húrin” from III

Really looking forward to this!

Get them, so that I can answer my own question, about whether I should get them?

I’ve acquired recordings of both of these two concert arrangements and added them to my collection. Am I missing anything else? I mean I know there are other concert arrangements of several of the film cues, but, are any of them substantially different, or longer, or anything of particular interest?

RotJ had the Leia twist. Palpatine = Sidious is a big twist if you’re pretending the Prequels aren’t Prequels. But I didn’t really mean any of that; the “endless stream” of twists I referred to were all in TLJ.

I would say there are only rare instances in which material from BOLT was later rewritten in “sublime” versions, and all such texts all anthologized in Unfinished Tales and The Lays of Beleriand (HOME III). (All involving the three Great Tales, though none can be considered complete, unlike the BOLT originals.) All other “sublime” works, that I can think of, are new pieces which are bolted onto the presupposed BOLT mythological framework—Finwë and Míriel, Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, etc. rather than replacing anything from BOLT. In other words, there is no satisfactory shortcut to experiencing the Legendarium which bypasses BOLT.

That’s right, and in the case of TLJ, the phenomenon is aggravated by the writer-director deliberately choosing at every turn to subvert audience expectations. Making Luke unheroic, killing off Luke, no explanation of Rey, no explanation of Snoke, killing off Snoke, putting Finn and Poe in their place, you know the whole laundry list—these were all risky decisions which were not guaranteed to be crowd-pleasers. I understand the ESB “twist” is somewhat of a tradition, but, this endless stream of 90 degree turns comes off as a big middle finger to all who have been following the franchise and who expect a generally logical progression from one entry to the next.

Do they mean Star Wars or the series in general?

Are we sure Rey doesn’t have some Skywalker in her?

The traditional list that you’d see in the front matter of a Tolkien book looks something like this (dates added by me): Works by J.R.R. Tolkien 1937. The Hobbit 1949. Farmer Giles of Ham 1954-1955. The Lord of the Rings 1962. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil 1964. Tree and Leaf 1967. The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann) 1967. Smith of Wootton Major Works published posthumously 1975. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo 1976. The Father Christmas Letters 1977. The Silmarillion 1979. Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien 1980. Unfinished Tales 1981. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien 1982. Finn and Hengest 1982. Mr Bliss 1983. The Monsters and the Critics & Other Essays 1983-1996. The History of Middle-earth 1998. Roverandom 2007. The Children of Húrin There have been more releases in the past decade (the “scraping the bottom of the barrel” series), but, let’s leave those aside for now, and get you up to speed. Having read The Hobbit and LOTR, you should certainly read all the rest of the non-posthumous stories at your leisure. Your plan of attack for the main Middle-earth works should be: The Silmarillion The Children of Húrin Unfinished Tales The History of Middle-earth I would be happy to explain why I suggest this order, but right now let me just state that the first two volumes of The History of Middle-earth make up The Book of Lost Tales, which IMO is Tolkien’s other masterpiece (other than LOTR). Almost all Tolkien books out there are rewrites of BOLT, or mine BOLT, or are straight reprints of material from BOLT. But none of them quite capture the magic of BOLT. Just read it, and ignore the footnotes, and forget everything you know, because it is a genius work on its own plane and not a LOTR tie-in.

Yes, exactly.

Just so as to keep all my embarrassing newbie questions in the same thread… It jumps out at me that Princess Leia’s Theme might be best listened to first, as an overture. (I.e., before listening to the rest of the soundtrack; OR even before watching the movie itself.) Does anyone else prefer this approach?

That would require rewatching the episodes. Are the episodes rewatchable? They seem to rely on “shock” value (though you can see all the “surprises” coming after the first few episodes).