General Tolkien Discussion (books, movies & TV)

[Arcadia]

We might be talking about two slightly different things. What I read (and who knows, at this point, what my source was) (or how accurate it was) that he intended the 6 books/appendices, but he meant for them to be published in a single large volume. But due to the cost of publishing at the time, the publisher chose to put them in three volumes. I can't remember who came up with the titles for each volume. As many besides me have pointed out, "Two Towers" is confusing (which two?) and "RotK" gives away the ending. Which makes me think that someone who never read them chose the titles..... 🤷‍♀️

So, the seven-volume set … does each volume have it's own title? It looks like "The Ring Sets Out" may be the title of the first volume? Which also somewhat gives away the plot.... as we don't know, going in, that the ring is important. Just sayin'.  

At any rate … yeah, too pricey for me, but it does sound like fun to have each book in a separate volume. Makes more sense, too. Oh dear, now I'm lusting after a 7-volume set as well....

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'd never noticed, but yes, each of the seven volumes has its own title:

1.  The Ring Sets Out
2.  The Ring Goes South
3.  The Treason of Isengard
4.  The Ring Goes East
5.  The End of the Third Age
6.  The War of the Ring
7.  Appendices

I have no idea who came up with those, but I figure Tolkien himself is a good bet -- or at least far more likely than with the "trilogy."

3 hours ago, Arcadia said:

It looks like "The Ring Sets Out" may be the title of the first volume? Which also somewhat gives away the plot.... as we don't know, going in, that the ring is important.

Well, the overall title could be considered a clue. 

[Arcadia]

Well, that's confusing. I thought the Third Age ended when Sauron fell? Or when Aragorn was crowned? Or when everyone hopped on the ships at the Grey Havens? Something in Book 6, at any rate.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Well, according to Appendix B, the Third Age ended on September 29, SR 1421, with the departure of Bilbo and Frodo from the Grey Havens.  Maybe Book 5 was the beginning of the end?

[Carol the Dabbler]

We just (re)watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and noticed that in addition to John Rhys-Davies as Indiana Jones's loyal friend Sallah, the cast includes Kirin Shah as Abu.  Not sure which character the latter was, but in 1981 Shah was in his mid-twenties.  My best guess is he played the young fellow in Sallah's household, and if so, then one scene included both the future Gimli and stunt-Frodo.    

Yeah, it takes so little to impress me!

[Arcadia]

I thought Abu was the monkey in "Aladdin."  

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

You must be thinking of the sequel, "Raiders of the Lost Magic Lamp."  

[Carol the Dabbler]

We just finished re-watching the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring, and I made a point of timing the fan-club list at the end:  20 minutes.  And they apparently count that as part of the extended footage.  

Don't worry about my sanity, though -- I didn't really watch that part, just played solitaire on my phone and glanced at the screen now and then to see how far down the alphabet they'd gotten.  The good news was that a good bit of the list was accompanied by an encore of the Concerning Hobbits theme, so I enjoyed that aspect of it, at least.

[Arcadia]

I've listened to it all the way through at least once.  

And why, pray tell, were you interested in timing it in the first place?

[Carol the Dabbler]

Well, it was running, and I was too lazy to get up and leave the room.  Plus I was curious -- we knew it was long, but neither of us really knew how long.  So I figured there was one sure-fire way to find out.

[J.P.]

You could just take a look at the counter… but it wouldn't be so much fun, huh?

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, J.P. said:

You could just take a look at the counter… but it wouldn't be so much fun, huh?

  The counter counts minutes? Egad, I always thought it was just a random interval...… 

[J.P.]

Mine does it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Carol the Dabbler]

  

4 hours ago, J.P. said:

You could just take a look at the counter… but it wouldn't be so much fun, huh?

Not as much fun, nope.  And I wouldn't know for sure it was accurate, unless I'd already verified the counter.  Plus I would've had to get out of my chair to check the counter.  Twice!

[Arcadia]

Let's face it, folks, she just REALLY REALLY wanted to sit through the whole 20 minutes.....

[Carol the Dabbler]

4 hours ago, Arcadia said:

she just REALLY REALLY wanted to sit through the whole 20 minutes

With the operative word being "sit."  (Or better yet, lie down.)  I'm beginning to think I may be catching Alex's cold.  Yecch!

[J.P.]

12 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Let's face it, folks, she just REALLY REALLY wanted to sit through the whole 20 minutes.....

IT'S FOR A CAAAAASE!

[Artemis]

Before the 3rd passes I would like to say Happy Birthday to my favorite author J.R.R. Tolkien, whose amazing work kindled my imagination and influenced my identity in childhood.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

That's really cool  Artemis, growing up with Tolkien. I'd never even heard of him till I was (just barely) an adult.  Kinda made up for lost time, I guess, but never had a child's perspective.

[Arcadia]

13 hours ago, Artemis said:

Before the 3rd passes I would like to say Happy Birthday to my favorite author J.R.R. Tolkien, whose amazing work kindled my imagination and influenced my identity in childhood.

 

Awesome. I will second that. My Dad gave me a copy of the Hobbit when I was 9 or 10 and Middle Earth has been my favorite place to visit ever since. I think it's fair to say Tolkien influenced the way I interact with the world, too. It certainly formed the basis of most of my early friendships. And I've always blamed LOTR for my preference for really long narrative arcs.  

[Arcadia]

Just saw that Christopher Tolkien has made his way to the Grey Havens. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-tolkien-died-son-of-lord-of-the-rings-author-j-r-r-tolkien-dead-age-95-2020-01-16/  RIP.

The obit includes this little snippet: "Amazon is working on a sprawling and expensive streaming series based on the Second Age of Middle-earth, which comes before the events depicted in The Lord of the Rings, CNET reported. This week, the company announced numerous cast members, including English actor Robert Aramayo. Aramayo played young Ned Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones, and will star as Beldor, the leading role in the new series."

Maybe we've heard it before, and I've just forgotten, but that seems to confirm that the TV series will be inspired by the Silmarillion, which could be interesting. At the same time, I don't think "Beldor" is one of Tolkien's creations, so it sounds like they're making up their own stories, which worries me a bit. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing turns out to be more like "Game of Thrones" than anything Tolkien ever wrote. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

What I've heard so far adds up to no hobbits -- so I won't be going out of my way to see it.

[Artemis]

4 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Maybe we've heard it before, and I've just forgotten, but that seems to confirm that the TV series will be inspired by the Silmarillion, which could be interesting.

Don't quote me on it, but I'm pretty sure they've confirmed that it won't be based on the Silmarillion (which mostly takes place in the First Age, from what I remember).  Now I have to Google...

There are several articles about it, but here's an excerpt from one of them:

Quote

Will Amazon's Lord Of The Rings Series Adapt Elements Of Tolkien's Silmarillion And Unfinished Tales?

Almost certainly not. As we understand it so far, Amazon's rights to Tolkien's work are the same rights that producer Saul Zaentz bought in the 1970s, leading both to Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord Of the Rings and eventually to Peter Jackson's films. These rights only include material from The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. So anything that's mentioned in those books (including Lord Of the Rings' lengthy appendices) is fair game, but anything exclusive to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, or Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume History of Middle Earth, is off limits. So the Amazon series probably can't touch The Fall of Gondolin, for example. But Númenor is fine.

What this means in practice is largely new stories written within the parameters of Tolkien's legendarium: think of how the recent video games Shadow Of Mordor and Shadow Of War have worked within the existing mythology. The Tolkien Estate's Matt Galsor has talked of the series comprising "previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings," while Amazon's own PR blurb describes "new storylines." But the Tolkien Estate and scholar Tom Shippey will be on hand to make sure nothing in the Amazon series contradicts anything Tolkien wrote. Everything has to fit.

...

 

[Arcadia]

11 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

What I've heard so far adds up to no hobbits -- so I won't be going out of my way to see it.

Yep. 😞 

10 hours ago, Artemis said:

Don't quote me on it, but I'm pretty sure they've confirmed that it won't be based on the Silmarillion (which mostly takes place in the First Age, from what I remember).  Now I have to Google...

There are several articles about it, but here's an excerpt from one of them:

...

 

That's why I said "inspired by", not "based on" but either way you're right and I'm wrong; the thing I read said "second age", and I forgot the Silmarillion was First Age.

We don't know much about the second age, do we? So I suppose hobbits could appear … ???  Wait and see......

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

We don't know much about the second age, do we? So I suppose hobbits could appear … ???

Well, yes and no.  There might be characters who are genetically hobbits, but in the Second Age they could not be Shire hobbits -- more like proto-hobbits, by which I mean their culture would be far different.  Whereas Tolkien based his late-Third-Age hobbit culture on rural England circa 1900, their Second-Age counterparts would presumably be more like Anglo-Saxons.