Middle-earth Journeys

I am game for a discussion also. Lots on my plate though...so...go slow.

We'll . . . go . . . slow. I thought that it might be easier to just read one article, and they are pretty readable.

I'm always more interested in material about LOTR than anything else, but there are several of those from which to choose. Any favorites, Iolanthe?

Count me in as well! It's been a while since I read my copy of Roots and Branches, but I really enjoyed it and would love to discuss it -- slowly!

Me too - it's been at least a year since I read my copy so will definitely need to catch up on some reading!

Merry wrote:I'm always more interested in material about LOTR than anything else, but there are several of those from which to choose. Any favorites, Iolanthe?

I'll have to let you choose, Merry. It's so long since I read it I've no idea what to pick .

Well, this sort of breaks our rule here a bit, but what do you think about starting with the last article on the movies? I have to admit that it was the first one I read.

Any other suggestions for articles to read? I've lent out my book for a few days, so I'm no help here.

I don't see why we shouldn't go for the last chapter - it's very topical with another Tolkien film adaption coming up and if it bends our rules a teeny bit then at least it's Shippey .

I agree - if Shippey's prepared to bring the films into academic discussion, then so am I!

Agreed! I'll start looking at the final chapter right away!

Shall we set February 1 as the day we'll begin discussing?

Last chapter...Feb 1...I think I can do that.

I'll try and speed read through it again to refresh my memory! I seem to remember a lot about the whole Palantir thing.

I'll get reading right away!

Pardon me if I kick this off a little early, but there was a recent article/interview with Viggo that we posted over at Viggo-Works and it is ironic that this comment from him about LOTR came up just as we were going to begin to talk about Shippey's chapter on the movies over here. I wanted to post it before I forgot about it because I think it is interesting.

In a Spanish interview, Viggo said the following...

For me, The Fellowship of the Ring was the most faithful to Tolkien, the most subtle in terms of narrative and interpretation. With the second movie, it was drifting more toward a huge production with big special effects. It was a big commercial success, but if I’d been in charge, I would have concentrated less on the effects and more on the characters. I would have given more dialogue to the secondary ones and not focused everything on the heroes. In some ways, there was much more balance in the first one, since all the races of Middle Earth appeared. It dealt more with personal relationships…

Now here is a man who was right on top of the filming and the telling of the tale Peter Jackson style. Here is also a man who is in the movie business. Is Viggo agreeing with, or is he at odds with Shippey, the Tolkien scholar and film outsider who says this in his chapter on the films?

Still, three points deserve to be extracted from them. First, Tolkien had no objection to a film version per se. Second, he realised straight away that for a film version his book would have to be cut; and he was sure that in such circumstances outright cutting would be preferable to compression. Better to take out entirely such semi-independent sections as the involvement with Tom Bombadil, or the Scouring of the Shire, or (he noted particularly, see Letters, 277) the return of Saruman, than to try to squeeze everything in at racing speed. What would happen if one chose that alternative would be, all too likely, that the Prime Action, Tolkien's term for Frodo and Sam making their way into Mordor, would be downgraded in favour of the Subsidiary Action, the wars and the battles and the heroes.