JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Other Middle-Earth Stories Book • Page 7

I just want to see Tom Bombadill

 

Movies are on Hulu!

 

Great phone wallpaper

 

Apparently Lord of the Rings extended editions are back in select theaters this week. Just got out of Fellowship. Still amazing. Probably gonna catch Two Towers around work, but won’t get Return in before I head to Iceland. Which is a shame. I’ve never seen the extended version in theaters—last time it was on my cousin’s birthday.

 

Damn. I need to look that up ASAP. I was just texting my friend the other day saying it’s time for a watch

 

Finally re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings this month. They're just brilliant, aren't they? I'd been meaning to re-read them for a while.

I've checked The Silmarillion out of the library - I've never read it before. I realised that there are a few other books by Tolkien (or at least put together by his son) set in Middle Earth. Where should I go next? Is there any logical order?

 

The Silmarillion is incredible. The Ainulindale, Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin...what a book to have all of that in its pages.

 

The only other real core Tolkien works outside of the three you mentioned are Unfinished Tales and Children of Hurin. As its name implies, Unfinished Tales has stories that are, well, unfinished and it's not nearly as complete a work as the Silmarillion but there's still a lot of really fascinating lore and stories hidden in there. Children of Hurin is an expanded edition of a chapter of The Silmarillion (Of Turin Turambar). I occasionally see some people say to stop reading The Silmarillion when you reach that chapter, read Children of Hurin instead, and then resume but I think that's mostly unnecessary. You should absolutely read Children of Hurin though, it's a fantastic tale and the expanded version that Christopher put together is wonderful.

The rest are all different sorts of beasts. The History of Middle-earth series chronicles Tolkien's progression writing his work, early versions of stories with lots of commentary from Christopher. It's a very interesting read but not required - if anything, the first two volumes (The Book of Lost Tales I & II) are worth reading the most out of any of these. They're primarily early versions of the tales of The Silmarillion, occasionally longer/more detailed accounts albeit more difficult reads. The standalone Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin books collect the different versions of those stories with commentary from Christopher. They're not a single, full narrative like Children of Hurin is and don't actually contain any significant new material like that book does but they're very good packages to better get a grasp on those stories (with beautiful illustrations).

tl;dr: read The Silmarillion, then Children of Hurin, then Unfinished Tales.

 

Thank you very much - this is really helpful and has helped me make sense of everything!

 

Children of Hurin >>>



but also the first few sections of The Silmarillion are some of the most beautiful things i’ve read.

 

I read the books a long time ago and saw the films when they first came out. I’m about to start Children of Hurin. I like the earlierntales much more than LOTR.

 

Anyone get The Fall of Gondolin yet?

 

Hobbit Day: Celebrating the brilliant performances in The Hobbit trilogy

 

Just realized the complete soundtrack recordings are on Apple Music, so I've got about a work day's worth of that sweet, sweet Howard Shore score to listen to.

But seriously, I always downplay how marvelous the score is for these movies. Easily my favorite soundtrack of all time when taken as a whole. The way Shore constantly brings back the motifs throughout all three films at precisely the perfect moments gives me chills just thinking about it. I want "The Grey Havens" played at my funeral.

 

Sent this text to my sister the other day haha

 

Does anyone prefer the theatrical versions to the extended versions? I'm watching the FOTR theatrical version for the first time since the theater, at first it was really jarring and feels rushed because there's so many little bits left out here and there.

But in all honesty, the extended scenes ultimately don't add too much narratively and I imagine I might actually prefer the theatrical versions some day, especially in regards to TTT and ROTK. The pacing of the EE edition on ROTK is incredibly slow, even though it's been my go-to version for 15 years. I have a feeling watching the theatrical version of that movie might bump it back up into contention as my favorite of the trilogy.

 

I've sadly not seen the extended editions although I really should do.

 

I’m extended editions always

 

Sam seeing the wood elves is worth it alone to me, not to mention all of the other nods to the original text.

 

Some of the scenes in the extended version of rotk make sense...like when they get out of the mountain and board the corsairs. In the theatrical, they just appear at the battle .

 

I don't prefer the theatrical editions, but I do agree that the pacing tends to be better in them. The pacing of FOTR theatrical is damn near flawless.

There were simply too many things left out of the theatricals however that I felt needed to be in. The biggest example is probably how they dealt with Saruman in the theatricals, in that they didn't, and just had the scene of him being bewildered at the destruction from up in his tower be his last scene.

ROTK EE is on the opposite end of the spectrum and is an example of the other extreme, but to me a lot of modern movies are edited to within an inch of their life and not given any room to breathe. If a movie is telling a good story I don't mind spending more time with it and having it take a little longer to unfold.

 

Interestingly, the omission of Saruman's (premature) demise in the theatrical cut is truer to the book. I wish a deleted scene of the scouring of the Shire was out there somewhere, more than just the allusion in Galadriel's mirror.

 

Honestly I was always fine not having the Saruman scene in the theatrical version of ROTK. I assumed he was being held captive by the Ents and no longer considered him a threat anyway. By ROTK, the only threat we need is Sauron.

The extended Saruman scene is fine, but it feels anticlimactic to kill him off after 2 minutes of screentime. (coincidentally, it's the same way I feel about Count Dooku's inclusion at the beginning of ROTS. Poor Christopher Lee cold never escape those anticlimactic death scenes.)

 

What always bothered me about things like relegating Saruman's fate to the extended edition was just that I feel like with a little bit better planning, three full, epic-length, 3 hour films should have been plenty of time to fit his fate in somewhere, especially when he was built up so much in the story. If you really planned for what ended up being his last scene (in the theatrical editions) to be his last scene, something more satisfying and plainly better was needed than just him looking bewildered and then a throwaway line later on. 540 odd minutes of screen time is a ton of time.

Structurally, in my opinion, I think the end of The Two Towers would have been the place to wrap up Saruman's storyline the way it was presented in the movies - i.e. no Scouring of the Shire. Dealing with it quickly at the beginning of the 3rd film feels odd and anticlimactic, similar to the way they had Smaug die at the beginning of the 3rd Hobbit movie as opposed to the end of the 2nd.

But for me, Saruman's fate was too important to the story to miss altogether so I'd take it where I could get it.