Wonder if I'm alone in this...

[Paul_Klein]

Before the Lord of the Rings film came out last Christmas, I read all the hype, and was frankly very "bleh" about it all. Even after seeing the trailor 5 or 6 times in the theatre, I still wasen't impressed. ("Are you frightened?" "Yes" "Not nearly frightened enough." OOOoooo a riiiiing. I'm shaking in my boots!)

I never read the books (well... about 5 years ago I starting reading the Hobbit. I found it on my father's bookshelf and gave it a go. All I remember is Gandalf and a bunch of Dwarves trying to convince Bilbo to go on some adventure he didn't want to undertake... I stopped reading becuase Tolkien's writing style bugged me).

I think I was mostly turned off from the move becuase at that time there was also a lot of hype of Star Wars Episode 2... but a LOT of folks here shruged it off, saying things to the effect of "Who needs Star Wars, we have LotR. Ep1 sucked, Ep2 will suck. Bring on Tolkien... blah blah blah". Being a huge fan of Star Wars, it angered me, and really tured me off of all thing LotR.

I evenutally saw the movie... and I liked it. I thought it was ... good. A lot of the dialogue went over my head becuase the actors (Aragorn and Gandalf mostly) tended to slur their sentences ... very bad when using the "fantasy" names of places in Middle Earth. I saw the movie twice in the theatre and I still didn't know what the name of the enchanted elven forest was, or the name of the mother elf was. But I digress.

I picked up the DVD becuase, frankly, the movie was pretty good IMO (and I have a lot worse in my collection )

Well... I've probably seen it in my home 6 times now, and I love it more and more each time. In fact... I freakin' LOVE the movie, characters, setting... everything.

I can't wait until the Two Towers comes out. I've watched the new trailor off the official webpage a dozen times now. I wanna BE Aragorn. I wanna BE Legolas. I wanna BE Merry (well... okay, I don't, but anyway).

I still love Star Wars and I still think its gets an overly harsh and unjustified rap, but at least Lord of the Rings is something I DO agree with the masses on.

So anyway, I'm frantically reading through The Fellowship (for the first time), to get to the Two Towers ... because frankly I want to read it before I see it commited to the Big Screen.

Anyway, I really don't know what the point of this post is all about. I THOUGHT I had one, but I guess not. I suppose it would be "Has anyone else been turned on to The Lord of the Rings becuase of the movie"?

There, a point.

 

[reutbing0]

Well I was into tolkien before, but the movie definitely re-invogorated my love for al things Tolkien.

 

[Dragongirl]

Fraid I can't help either. Been a Tolkein fan for years. Read the Hobbit, the LotR trilogy and the Silmarillion litterally dozens of times. Of the son's works I only have Unfinished Tales since I never seem to have the money to get the other compilations. Being so familiar with the world, I didn't have any problem understanding the place or character names.

I suggest getting the Silmarillion after you are done with the trilogy. It will give you a very nice history of Middle Earth prior to the WotR, though even I have to skip over some of the beginning of the book with the whole creation process.

P.S. I give this 1 hour max before it is moved to Non-RPG forum.

 

[Ranger REG]

If you have the DVD (I have the widescreen version), you can turn the English Subtitle on. Of course, most TVs manufactured after 1990's have closed caption decoders built in. I know that Sony have.)

You are correct regarding the Attack of the Clones. I do like it better than Episode I. Unfortunately, after having been exposed to The Phantom Menace, most mainstream moviegoers were reluctant to watch the Second Act of the Prequel Trilogy.

 

[Maraxle]

I suggest getting the Silmarillion after you are done with the trilogy. It will give you a very nice history of Middle Earth prior to the WotR, though even I have to skip over some of the beginning of the book with the whole creation process.

Ugh. If he had a hard time dealing with Tolkien's style in the Hobbit, he's going to hang himself before he's a quarter of the way through the Silmarillion. That book is dry and the writing is murky. It is what freed me from my Tolkien reading obsession.

 

[sircaren]

I too have been a Tokien fan for a long time. We read The Hobbit in school, and thus began my obsession with fantasy novels. Have you seen the animated version of The Hobbit? It's a good little show, you can get it on DVD or VHS now.

Ugh. If he had a hard time dealing with Tolkien's style in the Hobbit, he's going to hang himself before he's a quarter of the way through the Silmarillion. That book is dry and the writing is murky. It is what freed me from my Tolkien reading obsession.

I have to agree, while I enjoyed the Silmarillion myself, anyone who had trouble with the hobbit is going to hate it.

 

[Ezrael]

I remember, back before the movie came out, being involved in a discussion of Tolkien on the boards when they were still over at the original Eric Noah-3E site. At that time, I believe I was one of a few people who came out and admitted that I don't like Tolkien's writing style, I wasn't an especially big fan of the novels and that in general my tastes in fantasy are more along the E.R. Eddison/ Robert E Howard axis. (Howard the writer of the Kull stories, with their unusual existential aspects, although I do love just about everything he ever wrote.) I like Dunsany, Lovecraft, Moorcock. I'm just not a big fan of Tolkien.

I say this fully willing to concede the man's tremendous impact on modern fantasy, his large following, his ability to create a self-sustaining myth. I believe at the time I even said something to the effect that the books themselves have so established themselves culturally that they could now be called classics, and thus could survive any critical examination of them in a similar fashion to James Joyce's Ulysses or even The Iliad.

However, he has always left me cold. I just don't like the books and I have not been able to despite repeated readings. I recently gave the first book in the series a rereading out of a desire to be fair...and I still just don't like it. I understand that many do, I don't mean to cast aspertions on other people's tastes, it's just not a series I can read and enjoy.

All this to preface the fact that I loved the movie.

Finally I got what people liked about this story. Finally someone came down and took away the one thing that prevented me from enjoying it...namely, Tolkien's voice as a writer. I was finally able to see the world he created, the one that got people so enthusiastically involved in his work in the first place, and I did very much enjoy the story as it unfolded. Finally.

So yes, the movie helped me to appeciate Tolkien, the storyteller. I'm still not a big fan of his style, but I don't dig Herman Melville all that much, either. Doesn't mean that Moby Dick isn't a good story.

 

[Joshua Randall]

A lot of the dialogue went over my head becuase the actors (Aragorn and Gandalf mostly) tended to slur their sentences ... very bad when using the "fantasy" names of places in Middle Earth. I saw the movie twice in the theatre and I still didn't know what the name of the enchanted elven forest was, or the name of the mother elf was.

You're right. I've been a LotR fan for 15+ years and I also had a hard time understanding some of the dialogue. I don't know what it was, but the sound was... murky.

Also, the movie does a terrible job introducing characters. A lot of times we don't find out their names until much later than we should (quiz: when is Boromir first called by name? how about Galadriel and Celeborn?). In fact, that's one of my pet peeves about movies in general. I don't care how much editorial chopping gets done, do not cut out the scenes that introduce the characters!

Still and all, Fellowship of the Ring is a brilliant movie. I'm looking foward to the next two. IMHO, The Two Towers is a bit slow going, but whoah momma, Return of the King more than makes up for it. (And I agree with others: Avoid the Silmarillion unless you really care about Middle Earth history.)

 

[Tewligan]

I suggest getting the Silmarillion after you are done with the trilogy. It will give you a very nice history of Middle Earth prior to the WotR, though even I have to skip over some of the beginning of the book with the whole creation process.

About once a year or so, I get it into my head that I'm going to read The Silmarillion, and actually FINISH it this time. Alas, the best laid plans...Anyway, the creation legends in the beginning are my big stumbling block. My head starts swimming, what with every other word being a new name. Does it level out and become a little more readable after that?

 

[Maraxle]

Re: Re: Wonder if I'm alone in this...

IMHO, The Two Towers is a bit slow going, but whoah momma, Return of the King more than makes up for it.

Agreed. I can't remember which half of The Two Towers it is, but one half took me as much time to read as the entire Return of the King book. It nearly lost me, but I was rewarded for my perseverance.