http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1094420,00.html

good article

I'm in a similar boat. I like Star Wars (the first trilogy), and Star Trek, and I liked the Ralph Bakshi version of the Hobbit. But I can't bring myself to read the entire LOTR epic. And I got 30 minutes through the first movie of this set.

So I really can't identify with people who invest their lives in Star Trek or Star Wars or LOTR. There just seems to be so much more out there to enjoy without getting bogged down in those pieces of art.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching both LOTR movies. For me there are many subtle things going on that I just can't quite put my finger on. There was one particular scene in LOTR II where the Elven leader comes to help defend the humans against this great evil that is about to envelope them. I know it’s a movie and all, but I was struck by the generosity of this gesture. In Tolkien’s world, elves do not die of natural causes. Yet here they were, willing to sacrifice that immortality to stand up against evil. It was almost like Christ sacrificing himself on the cross to save believers from an eternity in the lake of fire. I also thought of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq making the same decisions.

Moving as the both films have been, you enjoy the moment and then go on with your life.

I'm one of those people who think that LOTR is the best fiction book ever written - I can't count the number of times I've read it; and I'm also one of those real weirdos who read the Silmarillion.

I can see why some people wouldn't like the story - there are great books praised to the skies which I find positively nauseating. What I had not known, until I read the link, is that there are people who are actually contemptuous of Tolkien's work. That seems to be an example of people who have waaaay too much time on their hands...to pick up a book, read the first couple chapters and decide its not for you, thats completely understandable...to apparantly go through the whole thing and then write nasty things about it? Thats just strange.

I am also an enthusiastic fan of Babylon 5. It not quite up to Tolien's level, but it is a very rich story.

Ted, that scene you described was special because it was a nod toward's Tolkien's back-story of how the elves were involved with bringing the One Ring to being in the first place. I am not particularly versed in the specifics of the story, but the Elves were essentially immortal because they were 'angelic' hosts who had come to Middle Earth to try and stop Sauron, and failed. Galadriel had been their leader, which is why in FOTR, she says 'I have passed the test.' She had badly bungled the fight against Sauron because she thought that gaining control of the Ring would be the way of winning. The Ring in Lorien was Fate's way of giving her the chance to redeem herself.

I don't think that in the book, that Elves came to Helm's Deep (I always skipped that part, except the tidbits between Legolas and Gimli, which were highly amusing), but that Jackson put them in there helped to emphasize that the Elves would not abandon their fight against evil.

And before I am accused of being a Tolkien freak, one has to understand that the reason these things are subtle hints is because Tolkien attempted to make this story a HISTORY, so the subtleties you pick up on have actual basis, rather like REALLY understanding why Americans STILL argue among themselves over how best to run the government. Its because that is the way it was started.

Sharon, the Elves were in Middle-earth before Sauron was ever around. The elves defeated Morgoth first on Middle-earth, and Sauron was Morgoth's apprentice. The way I understand it, is the elves' main mission on Middle-earth is to prevent anyone from leaving the continent so the inherant evil doesn't reach their own continent. The elves helped in the creation of the rings because they thought Sauron was their friend at the time; then Sauron tricked them with his One Ring. Basically Middle-earth is like a little evil-farm that the elves maintain just so that the evil doesn't get bored and follow them home.

Dowingba is close, but having just finished the Silmarillion for the umpteenth time, I feel honor-bound to correct him.

Sauron, as a Maia, predates the Elves.

The Elves did not defeat Morgoth. The Valar did, having been convinced to do so by Earendil, Elrond's father.

The song sequence (where the world is created as a song sung by Iluvatar and the Valar) hints that the Elves were the first attempt at goodness, and that Men were the second, brought in after Melkor/Morgoth corrupted the first.

The elves were all called to Valinor very early, but many did not make the trip; this is where some of the elves of Middle-earth come from. Others (the Noldor) went and came back; due to the circumstances by which they came back, these elves are the most powerful, but also cursed. Galadriel is one of the Noldor.

The LOTR ends with the last of the Elves returning to Valinor, along with Frodo and Bilbo, who are granted special dispensation to make the trip because they bore the Ring.

Re-reading that, I seem to be singling out dowingba for censure. To correct that:

The Elves were not 'angelic'. They were the first Children of Iluvatar (Men were the Second), and awakened in Middle-earth in the same manner that Men and Dwarves awakened after them. They were immortal, though they could die from injury or from the burden of cares in the world. If there were an angelic class in the world of Tolkien, it would probably be the Maiar.

Galadriel was, perhaps, the most powerful of the Elves in the Middle-earth of the LOTR, but she was certainly not their leader in earlier days. As a Noldor, she was under the curse of the Kinslaying, and saw her grandfather, uncles, brothers, father, and cousins destroyed by lust for the Silmarils, powerful jewels made by her grandfather that captured the light the Sun and Moon were made from. The long years of suffering and destruction she witnessed no doubt helped her resolve to forswear the Ring.

The Elves, indeed, did not appear at Helm's Deep in the book (except for Legolas). In the book, Aragorn and Eomer (under Theoden) commanded the armies of Rohan against Saruman's Orcs, and another commander (Erkenbrand) commanded the relief troops that saved Helm's Deep in the end.

They used real people in those movies because they couldn't find enough munchkins at the lollipop guild?

Mark Noonan wrote:

there are great books praised to the skies which I find positively nauseating.

What he said.

I have read many of the backstories (but strangely, not the silmarillion), and I always thought the Valar were elves. I thought it just meant people from Valinor. Also, it never seemed to explain exactly what Sauron was (apparently it does in the Silmarillion). I always just assumed he was either an "elf gone bad" or just a creature of his own race. Man, I've got to get that book. It explains so many things.

(Secretly Dean is watching this conversation and compiling a list of people not to let his sister marry.)

I'll try my hand at explaining, if I can. In Tolkien's Middle Earth, the world was created out of the void by Illuvatar (or Eru if you prefer) with the help of some others under him. These others were separate from the world but some of them entered it (and were changed but remained powerful), these are the Valar. You might think of them as gods in this mythos, if you like. Their servants, also powerful but several rungs down, were the maia. In this world were created other creatures, some by Illuvatar, some by others. Elves were the first, though men and dwarves came later (one of the Valar actually created the dwarves). Elves were fair and pure and immortal, though not perfect, and some of them became corrupted or tainted, or simply complicated. Men were given the gift of mortality, such as it were, and were more free than elves to choose either evil or good.

Early in the history of Middle Earth one of the Valar turned to evil (though really the seed of rebellion began even before the creation of the world), this was Morgoth, as powerful a force in middle earth as any other. Great wars involving elves, Valar, dwarves, and men occured during Morgoth's attempt to subjugate Middle Earth. These are the topics of many of the songs and legends embedded in the Lord of the Rings (Silmarils, Thangorodrim, etc.). Because of Morgoth's evil he was denied the power to create as other Valar could (such as with the Dwarves) and had only the power to corrupt. Eventually he was defeated once and for all. But many maia that had followed him and many of his corruptions still remained. Morgoth's right hand man had been the powerful maia Sauron. He was very wily and cunning and took up his master's place, though not openly at first. Right after Morgoth had been defeated he claimed to have ended his evil ways, at the time he had great power to persuade (improved, probably, by his ability to change his appearance to a pleasing form) and eventually he wormed his way into the councils of men and elves. He helped the elves to create great rings of powerful magic, but he secretly fashioned his own ring to rule the other such rings. His actions helped lead to the downfall of the height of post-Morgoth Middle Earth (where there was, for a time, a great peace and cooperation between elves and men and dwarves) ultimately culminating in the war of the ring whereby elves, dwarves, and men banded together to defeat Sauron's forces and cast him down. Which they eventually managed, at great cost, though at the end the human who defeated Sauron, Isildur, and cut the one ring (the ruling ring) from his finger did not destroy the ring and instead kept it. Sauron, being a powerful maia, was in essence immortal and could not truly be defeated so long as the ring survived, since he put much of his power and essence into it (which is why the ring's power and taint was so terrible, and why he needed it so badly as well). The ring eventually betrayed Isuldur by sliping off his finger while he was trying to sneak by a host of orcs (one of the ring's powers was to give invisibility to its wearer) and so Sauron survived, after a fashion, while the ring was lost and slowly rebuilt his power while elves, men, and dwarves slowly drifted apart, embittered by the sacrifices made to defeat Sauron. This then arrives at the setting for The Lord of the Rings and the second war of the ring when Sauron has rebuilt his forces and begins making war on his old enemies while trying to recover the ring from wherever it got off to. I hope this clears things up somewhat.

"I liked the Ralph Bakshi version of the Hobbit."

Actually that would be Rankin-Bass. Bakshi made a movie based on "Fellowship" and portions of "The Two Towers". Rankin-Bass did a TV movie based on "The Hobbit" and eventually another TV movie called "The Return of the King", which took the elements that Bakshi did not use and finished the story.

One muddled mess, to be sure. You can get all three on DVD, some stores (like Barnes & Nobles) even have bundled them together.

As for the books, they are among my favorites. I also like George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and others of that period. They are the first fantasy books that I encountered, at a period when there was little else to read (anybody remember the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy seies?). On the other hand, I like little fantasy that has come out since then.

For a particularly scathing -- and well-deserved, IMO -- critique of the Bakshi attempt to do FOTR and parts of TTT, go here.

Wow, a post about how one doesn't really get into LOTR devolves into a deep "theological" discussion of LOTR backstory. If that's not proof of a deeper-than-normal following, I don't know what is.

Re: Bakshi, sorry for the confusion. I like the animation, and if you don't know all the permutations of the original, it wasn't that bad.

Well, lets cross that off the list of things that'll never happen....never, ever thought I'd see a discussion of the Valar, etc....

Word of warning to those who want to read "The Silmarilion." Its been 20 years since I read it, but I remember that the first 100 pages of the book were very difficult to get through. It was analogous to reading geneologies in the Bible, or very dry history.

However, once you get past them, the story becomes fascinating and you find yourself flipping back to the first 100 pages to "fact-check" the story. It was unlike reading any other book I ever read. You cannot really read it from page 1 to the end of the book and be satisfied. It is a book that can be tremendously satisfying to one who has the inclination and willingness to struggle through it. But it is not a light read, and not suited for entertainment unless one is willing to become "involved."

This is why those who have taken the time to struggle through it have become devotees, and those who try to read it straight through for entertainment's sake are left feeling gipped. I haven't read it since I was a teen, but I remember really enjoying it by the time I reached the end of the book.

Actually, for those who can't get through the Simarillion (which many otherwise determined readers of my acquaintance can't), there is now-- I kid you not-- The Origins of Tolkien's Middle Earth For Dummies, a "For Dummies" book I can wholly get behind. With any luck, it also explains how Gandalf got his job (he was late to a meeting!) and why Gandalf was the only one who could fight the Balrog (they were both initially Maiar, as in under-angel types, but the Balrog followed Melkor/Morgoth and Gandalf incarnated as one of the Istari. Incidentally, Sauron also happened to be a Maiar, which is why Saruman thought he could overthrow Mr. Evil Eye.)

can any of you relate these stories to history? or is it assumed that for the most part, all is fictional...??

I read somewhere that Tolkien became disillusioned with technological change, so he sold his car after World War One. I guess, he was a greenie. I also remember seeing his name as editor of a modern translation of the bible called "The Jerusalem Bible".

So did he create a fantasy world to escape from this world? Or did he want to make some allegorical statements about the evils of technolgy that has brought us World Wars?

From the foreword of my copy of Lord of the Rings -
"As for any meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical or topical."
and
"The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion."