Kalbear Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 I had thought this as well - and I really didn't care to read it much - but what changed my mind was reading it out loud to my kids. For a number of reasons - the language cadence, the slower pace, the relationships and the way people went through it - it ended up being significantly stronger for me. I still think the Hobbit is the better story of the two, but both are much better now in my estimation than they were before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seli Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 Quite a common opinion. Me I came to Tolkien early, and through a background of history and mythology reading even more than fantasy. It worked really well for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry of the Lawn Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 On 9/9/2018 at 12:49 PM, charlesstork said: If I strip away the historical significance and evaluate them solely for how enjoyable they were to read, I come away not very impressed. Am I completely out to lunch here? Do people really enjoy the books themselves, without giving them extra credit for their standing as fantasy classics? You quit at the worst possible spot, it sounds like, going by what you've described. The second two installments are much more influential in the series you've enjoyed. And if you think of LotR as a single book (which it is) you're not even halfway through. I think LotR is about the same size or smaller than A Storm of Swords, for instance. I'd take another crack at it. If you don't like it you can shred it here! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aceluby Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 45 minutes ago, larrytheimp said: You quit at the worst possible spot, it sounds like, going by what you've described. The second two installments are much more influential in the series you've enjoyed. And if you think of LotR as a single book (which it is) you're not even halfway through. I think LotR is about the same size or smaller than A Storm of Swords, for instance. I'd take another crack at it. If you don't like it you can shred it here! I'd even go far as to say to watch FotR movie and then read The Two Towers. It's quite possibly one of my favorite books of all time, and the end of Return of the King was extremely surprising and one of my favorite parts of all the books. (I know I'm in the minority in that one, but it really highlights the growth of the characters IMO) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baxus Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 14 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said: HM, I feel like even if you're a fan of the film's it's wrong to say you don't miss anything. The film's are thematically very different to the books and vthe difference leads the omission or alteration of some significant material (e.g. paths of the dead, much of the siege of Minas Tirith, the entire scouring of the shire). You also misss the rather beautiful prose too. I'm not shy in admitting I'm not a fan of the film's (especially the latter two) but I don't feel like this colours my belief that there is much to miss out on by not reading the books Finally someone who shares my thoughts on the movies. Some of the parts I enjoyed the most when reading LotR have been either cut out completely or reduced to insignificance in the movies. One of my favourite parts in the books was watching the bond between Gimli and Legolas being forged and that was just mangled in the movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mankytoes Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 On 9/10/2018 at 8:10 PM, Jo498 said: I used to find the Hobbit quite impressive in the way it starts as a children's book and becomes ever more serious in tone and themes as the journey progresses. I agree with that. Because it is called a children's book, I was expecting a fairly simple, "good guys win" ending. So when you get to the complexity, it's a pleasant surprise. On 9/10/2018 at 9:28 PM, Kyll.Ing. said: To put my thoughts I got from the re-read attempt in seven words: Just shut up about the elves already! Yeah, if he wanted to write about elves so much, he should have made them the protagonists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 On 9/10/2018 at 4:28 PM, Kyll.Ing. said: I read the whole LOTR trilogy in my native language some 15 years ago or so, and I remember thinking it was quite a brick. And also that the film adaptations were so good that you don't really lose out on much if you don't read the books. Now I got the English version for Christmas last year, and I think it was quite nice to try to read the books in the original language - but my read is still around 100 pages in, the book quickly put down again whenever I try to read more, and I keep pushing it back in the queue of books I'm reading. To put my thoughts I got from the re-read attempt in seven words: Just shut up about the elves already! Don’t get me started on how many crappy, unnecessary, and poorly choosen changes were made by Peter Jackson and his writing team. Some made sense, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen for example. Others, the gross oversimplification of Denethor’s character, the magical elvish Middle-Earth transit system, the scrubbing bubbles of death, Frodo sending Sam home by himself on the doorstep of Mordor, etc... No, the LOTR adaptations are not bad but they could have been much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mankytoes Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 23 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Don’t get me started on how many crappy, unnecessary, and poorly choosen changes were made by Peter Jackson and his writing team. Some made sense, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen for example. Others, the gross oversimplification of Denethor’s character, the magical elvish Middle-Earth transit system, the scrubbing bubbles of death, Frodo sending Sam home by himself on the doorstep of Mordor, etc... No, the LOTR adaptations are not bad but they could have been much better. Surely the worst thing was presenting Saruman as the main on screen antagonist in Two Towers, but then just having him disappear for Return of the King? That seems like a really basic rules of screenwriting- if you build a character up that much (he gets a lot of screen time in the first two films), you have to give a satisfying resolution. Or, at the very least, a resolution. Most changes worked though. Why would Frodo not send Sam home? He genuinely believed he was stealing food and wanted to steal the ring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 10 minutes ago, mankytoes said: Surely the worst thing was presenting Saruman as the main on screen antagonist in Two Towers, but then just having him disappear for Return of the King? That seems like a really basic rules of screenwriting- if you build a character up that much (he gets a lot of screen time in the first two films), you have to give a satisfying resolution. Or, at the very least, a resolution. Most changes worked though. Why would Frodo not send Sam home? He genuinely believed he was stealing food and wanted to steal the ring. There is a better question: why would Sam, the ever devoted Sam, agree to go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baxus Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Don’t get me started on how many crappy, unnecessary, and poorly choosen changes were made by Peter Jackson and his writing team. Some made sense, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen for example. Others, the gross oversimplification of Denethor’s character, the magical elvish Middle-Earth transit system, the scrubbing bubbles of death, Frodo sending Sam home by himself on the doorstep of Mordor, etc... No, the LOTR adaptations are not bad but they could have been much better. It did make sense up until the point where Arwen takes a friggin' katana out, turns to all nine Nazgul and goes all "come at me, bro" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 I am not too fond of Gimli - Legolas in the books but the movie Gimli is a ridiculous travesty. But let's not do another thread against the movies. I think it was Roose Bolton's pet leech who in a similar thread once classified books/series according to their (main) focus on characters, plot, world, ideas, and maybe another one. Characters are not the main focus in LotR but they are in a lot of more recent fantasy. The Tolkien plots suffer from having been copied so many times. And many readers do not seem to have an "ear" (cf. the example above how reading aloud has changed one's impression) for the tone and mood of some books. Which is o.k. and it probably happens to everyone with some books. Still, in my impression many readers today don't much care about the prose or more generally all the features that make a piece of writing literature and not some in principle interchangeable medium to convey a certain action, i.e. something that can as well be replaced by a movie based on the same or a similar plot. I guess that for many lovers of Tolkien some of the very same things that seem boring (several names for all those places in different languages, long songs and poems etc.) to others are central to what makes his books special. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mankytoes Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: There is a better question: why would Sam, the ever devoted Sam, agree to go? Well, you could say that being devoted means doing what Frodo tells him to. I thought it made sense in context. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 1 minute ago, mankytoes said: Well, you could say that being devoted means doing what Frodo tells him to. I thought it made sense in context. No, he might have moved away but he would never have just started walking home. He would have followed Frodo from a distance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 Go home Sam is probably my biggest person hate in the film's. Biggest disappointment was the omission of the Scouring but that decision I at least understand from a timing POV (it's already a looooooong film). To tie this back to the OP, the RotK is truly a beautiful piece of work and has such a brilliant ending. You like ASOIAF (obviously) and Hobb. Presumably you have heard GRRM talk of a bittersweet ending. Well imo LOTR is the perfect example of doing this kind of ending in a subtle, nuanced way. It's not death after death after death, as such. But it's very much informed by Tolkien's own experiences as a WWI veteran. It's a truly wonderfully written conclusion to the novel. Since you mentioned Hobb, I think she does a similar thing with many of her endings, if not quite so well executed (and I say that as a massive fan of Hobb) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The hairy bear Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 Tolkien was trying to create an English national mythology by emulating the old epic poems and the norse sagas. Nowadays, modern readers tend to enjoy certain characteristics (plot twists, hidden puzzles, grey morality, 3rd person limited POV,...) that are simply absent in myths. Beowulf was indisputably the good guy, and Grendel the bad one. We are not supposed to care about Gilgamesh's strained relationship with his parents. Everyone knows from minute one that the Trojans are going to lose the war. The fact that narrative fashion has moved from this, it doesn't mean that the work is not magnificent. But expectations should be aligned with what Tolkien actually intended to achieve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 There is actually quite a bit of grey morality in the old epics although this is somewhat misleading as some of them really are Beyond (Before) Good and Evil. Who is good/bad in the Iliad? The Trojans are in some sense the guilty party but Hector is mostly a positive figure (Paris admittedly isn't). Achilles is the greatest warrior but he is moody, he has no problems with lots of Greeks dying because he sulkingly withdrew from battle. His grievance is justified (Agamemnon took his girl because he had to give his own mistress back to end the plague) but he is certainly overreacting. And so on. I wonder which was the first fantasy epic with limited and changing 3rd person pov? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Don’t get me started on how many crappy, unnecessary, and poorly choosen changes were made by Peter Jackson and his writing team. Some made sense, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen for example. Others, the gross oversimplification of Denethor’s character, the magical elvish Middle-Earth transit system, the scrubbing bubbles of death, Frodo sending Sam home by himself on the doorstep of Mordor, etc... No, the LOTR adaptations are not bad but they could have been much better. Ok, I'm racking my brain and can't figure it out. Which one was this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted September 12, 2018 Share Posted September 12, 2018 7 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said: Ok, I'm racking my brain and can't figure it out. Which one was this? I think it's just the general habit of elves popping up where they should not be, like whatshischops showing up at Helm's Deep or Elrond rocking up personally with the reforged sword to give it to Aragorn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted September 13, 2018 Share Posted September 13, 2018 3 hours ago, polishgenius said: I think it's just the general habit of elves popping up where they should not be, like whatshischops showing up at Helm's Deep or Elrond rocking up personally with the reforged sword to give it to Aragorn. Precisely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted September 13, 2018 Share Posted September 13, 2018 But this is just sloppy in the movies, isn't it? We see the elves riding or marching and it is not implied that they have some magic travelling system. (I am not mod, but again, I don't think we should turn this into another thread about how bad the movies are.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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