Half term challenge

So, after many years I have been, finally, persuaded to watch two sets of films. They are the Hobbit & the Lord of the Rings. Oddly, as a single book, the hobbit has been transformed into three films. The LOTR was a set of three books converted into three films as well. However, the LOTR is a vastly larger book and had the film been produced last (the Hobbit was made last as a film, but it is set about 60yrs before the events in the LOTR), it would have been about nine films, or maybe more in fact! Considering all films are approximately 3 hrs long it’ll take me eighteen hours to watch them all: it is quite a challenge!

I have loved these stories since I first read them when I was about 13 years old. I first bought an omnibus of the LOTR in a bookshop in Brixham called, the book warren. It cost me £5. It must have taken about a year to go through the entire book! It is long, it is complicated, and as Tolkien created a whole new language, some of the words were virtually unpronounceable to a 13yr old. However, what it really was, underneath it’s bulk, was a magnificent story. A timeless tale that is very easy to fall in love with. It is a grand sweeping narrative of imagination that drowns you in a wave of richness and lustre. 

Tolkien was of course a genius in languages. He was a professor of languages at Oxford. He played with words for fun. The very structure of these books is held in place by the elven language he created. Yet, he, as a writer, didn’t soft soap it or make it more accessible for lesser minds or younger ones. He laid it down and made you learn upwards as opposed to dumbing down. A cultural shift we are paying the price for now, of course, to our great shame.  

And so, from books I love to films of the books I have never seen. I had never watched them as I love the books so much and would hate to see my mental imagery of them, built over thirty years, despoiled by a bad rendering of something precious to me (precious, being the name by which the one ring goes by to Golem/Sméagol). You should never meet your heroes they say. A not too dissimilar scenario. 

There is no Tom Bombadil in the films. I am really going to struggle with his omission. As I start my marathon I hope to be able to enjoy what I am about to discover in this world of films. We all know films aren’t quite as good as books, don’t we?!

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