>"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away."
>"They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."
Why is he acting like the hobbit is some masterpiece of literature, it's just a children's book
Landon Peterson
To be honest, I don't get why people hype LoTR books so much. I mean, there great and influential but are essentially just big D&D campaigns with some deus ex machina moments.
Brandon Hall
Well, it is a known fact Tolkien hated the shit out of his fans and tried to avoid them as much as possible, I am sure he would hate the movies.
Hudson Perry
>waah they turned my daddy's book into a movie I don't enjoy >What do you mean "why did I sell the movie rights then"?
Adam King
>young people ruin everything
typical old person response.
Levi Miller
>>"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away."
It was a book about dragons and elves you pretentious faggot, lol
Robert Gutierrez
>Was Christopher right? Yes.
Leo Lopez
c'mon man. let us have our middle earth theme park
It has existed long enough and been influential enough for contrarians to dissect it down to a level of "it's just (insert things it influenced)" or "it's overrated". I think it's mythology and lore are the best parts about the middle earth stories.
Adrian Long
> The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing
What did he mean by this? the books aren't anything fucking Special Chris, you cunt.
Anthony Hill
To be fair, the books were also for children.
Liam Turner
>>young people ruin everything It's true tho
Henry Sullivan
Well, the 40min battle scenes are like 2 pages long in the book. The movies are the definition of a flick and terrible adaptations. I kinda like the first one though.
Levi Williams
>father sells the rights his greatest works to give you a wonderful life >wah muh aesthetics
Kayden Brooks
No one in this thread has read the books obviously. Yes, the Hobbit is a simple-hearted work of fiction. But The Lord of the Rings is a poetic masterclass and the benchmark for fantasy writing and writing in general.
Failing to realise this not only reveals your simplemindedness, but also makes you sound like a thick-sculled, autistic toddler with downs.
Chase Hughes
he's right you know
Juan Barnes
WATCH IT JACKSON!
Connor Foster
>DUDE LEGOLAS SURFING DOWN A STAIRCASE LMAO Yeah I'd say they lost a bit of the philosophical impact there.
Ryan Brown
>No one in this thread has read the books obviously. You're actually not special for reading the books that literally every middle schooler somewhat interested in reading has read.
>benchmark for fantasy writing Yes.
>a poetic masterclass lol no, kill yourself
Tyler Miller
I read lotr trilogy twice, once as a child and again after the first movie, and I thought they were very faithful considering, and then the extended editions knocked it out of the park, the hobbit on the other hand, jesus.
Julian Martin
Read them as a teenager, loved them, but when I tried to go back recently, the childish tone and constant singing were a huge turn-off. Hardly top-tier writing.
Ian Davis
>Hardly top-tier writing. Well argued I can tell your a master linguistic your self LOL
Cooper Baker
The world in lotr is created by music. Most of you idiots can't even read.
Alexander Murphy
Since he can't stand that scrutiny, he always was shit, carrol was right and true... As is said, Any real writer can withstand that scrutiny... He and the bob dylans, john frusciantes, zizeks... Can't. They were always playing for the wrong team. It's simple really, a real writer sits well with the memory, a shit one, doesn't. Selfsame with the hermeticmagiqtradition btw. Hells yehss!!!
Julian Watson
Yes
Michael Lopez
I can't tell if it's ingenious or fucking stupid but it's definitely one of the more beautifully written parts of the Silmarillion
Jose Johnson
>Was Christopher right?
Yes and if you disagree your a meme shit head.
Elijah Thomas
>LOL
Jaxson Sanders
:D
Cameron Thompson
>Yeah I'd say they lost a bit of the philosophical impact there.
BUT BUT WE HAVE TO SELL ACTION FIGURES FOR KIDS
DON'T FORGE ABOUT THE KIDS
Andrew Lee
The lotr films literally could not have gone better, they won huge numbers of awards, were lauded by critics and that cunt has still done nothing but complain.
Christopher could have demanded some creative control but he took the money instead so he should shut his talentless fucking mouth.
Charles White
>they won huge numbers of awards, were lauded by critics Wow it's fucking nothing.
Michael Cruz
No u
Adam Perez
Who was the only person alive to have met Tolkien himself.
Grayson Hernandez
Christopher Tolkien is a known hateful cunt who disinherited his kids (or just one of them) because they liked the LOTR movies. Nothing he's ever said has any value and everybody should know that already.
Samuel Nguyen
Young people don't run the planet for a good reason.
Luke Phillips
Him having met his own father doesn't make him any less of a self-absorbed cunt.
Alexander Gonzalez
It's hard to imagine those movies having more success, but they certainly could have been better.
Christopher White
So Tolkien was a Howard Hughes level of recluse in the last decades of his life? He died in the 70s.
Adrian Sullivan
Nothing's ever perfect, but that's as much Christopher's fault as anyone. Surrendering all creative control and then moaning about the resulting films is pathetic.
Landon Green
I admire that level of upper class ruthlessness.
Dominic Cruz
>be tolkien >learn to write at age four >study classics and english at oxford, finish latter with honours >become youngest professor at Leeds >produce many translations of famous works like Sir Gawain that become academic standards >become professor of anglo-saxon at oxford >be influential academic literary critic >write massively successful LOTR trilogy >critical acclaim >spawn entire genre of fiction >in the decades after more and more people cash in on muh elves, muh dwarves, muh dragons, to the point where people now associate it with WoW and GRRM >opinion of Tolkien and LOTR is now retroactively infected by these things to the extent where NEETs call Tolkien's work just a 'D&D campaign with some deus ex machina moments'
shaking my head to be honest phamalamamma
Adam Ross
Christopher Lee was best friends with J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien actually said he would put Lee in the role of Gandalf if they ever had to adapt his novels into films.
Angel Perez
I will never understand why he is so butthurt about the LOTR films. They are about just as good as anyone could have hoped they would be. His hatred of the hobbit films is absolutely justified though
Austin Roberts
>They are about just as good as anyone could have hoped they would be. They are literal perfection when compared to Peter Jackson's previous shitty works. How the fuck did that happen.
Kayden Taylor
He's also dead.
Grayson Sullivan
You shouldn't be on Sup Forums at work Colbert.
Jack Long
wow Hollywood chews up books and makes them into shitty films
who knew
really makes you think
really gets your thinker a goin
Nathaniel Cox
Yes. The movies are just good action movies
Jacob Hill
But it's true.
Josiah Mitchell
Huh, really gets your noggin joggin'
Julian Anderson
>self absorbed >is defending his Father's work how is that self-absorbed?
Well, thats how some people see it now but thats like saying Shakespeare uses too many cliches. You're kind of looking at it backwards, the tropes and cliches of modern fantasy exist because Tolkien made his world and characters so deep and rich and tons of people copied his work which is why it seems cliche to us now, but it was singular in its time.
A lot of the actions are the same but Jackson goes too far in his own direction as the story goes on for my taste. First Hobbit movie was solid, the second one descends quickly and I wanted to hang myself before the end of the third.
Evan Richardson
>there great and influential There you go.
Colton Young
Really gets your cock cacklin'
Lucas Harris
>Tolkien writes escapist fiction for people living in a world torn by war >goes out of his way to tell anyone who tries to draw parallels between reality and his works that there's no metaphor in it and it's pure escapism >his own son still treats it like some kind of sacred cow I can safely say your father is disappointed in you Chris.
Luke James
...
Joseph Morales
>It was a book about dragons and elves you pretentious faggot, lol
Typical teenager response. No, it wasn't. It was an allegory on the cycles of human civilizations, and an ode to ethno-nationalism with traditional values.
Luis Rodriguez
>Christopher Lee was best friends with J.R.R. Tolkien. Christopher Lee met Tolkien once lmao
Xavier Jenkins
Bullshit.
Christopher Lee only met him once.
Logan Hernandez
Tolkien disliked direct allegory, but what he meant and talked of in his letters is that he never meant The Hobbit or LOTR to be directly interpreted as his reflection on WWI and its aftermath in the way people normally did, but that the themes of decay, wanton destruction, the loss of innocence and the glimmer of hope that remains are applicable to many more situations than just his personal experiences. He didn't want his work to be seen as a veteran's musings on a war he happened to survive but about the struggle against the immense injustices of the world from a position of powerlessness and the will to go on in the face of noble failure, like Boromir giving his life to save the hobbits even though he had succumbed to his temptation or soul-shredding success where Frodo is left physically and mentally incapable of just picking up his life where he left it. This applies to way more than just WWI and Tolkien wanted his readers to see it in a broader way.
Charles Clark
the books are pointless escapist fantasy worthy of no more respect than an animorphs book, but the movies are also terrible, so he's half-right
Joseph Phillips
I bet you enjoy ASOIAF
Lucas Hernandez
>worthy of no more respect than an animorphs book Why not?
Benjamin Morgan
ASOIAF is about 10x better literature than LOTR
Jacob Bailey
Yes they are?
Evan Hall
weak b8
Chase Ramirez
indeed, but it's a really good and well-written children's book. having interned in the publishing field, i can attest most children's books are really, really, really simplistic and awfully written. LOTR is children's lit done correctly, similar to the Narnia and Alice books.
having said that, Chris Tolkien is full of it. the books are still there for anyone to read. his gripe is with how the fantasy has rooted itself on pop culture because of the films? there's no control over that. they signed over the licensing rights and collected the millions, by my understanding.
Josiah White
>pointless escapist fantasy Couldn't you accuse any noneducational fiction of this? Even with nonfiction you are often just reading it for your own amusement.
Matthew Martin
they contain exactly the same political thought, expression of the human experience, and consideration for the progress of their artform, that is to say, none at all. they're both base entertainment for children
Juan Gomez
>name dropping animorphs
Quality fiction you seem to read user :^)
Austin Mitchell
Because nothing that has been influenced by Tolkien has been nearly at the same level and will certainly not live as long as Tolkien's work. I mean, I love LOTR and after I read Silmarillion I am simply astonished over how complex and beautiful his world is.
>"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations" - Tolkien
Luis Wilson
>Has read Dickens once and thinks he's some literary expert
See and You're an idiot.
Elijah Ortiz
The really fucked up part is that for Tolkien, LOTR and The Hobbit were secondary afterthoughts to his goal of completing The Silmarillion. People can imitate that kind of depth but most writers just make up the backstory to serve the narrative not the other way around.
Joseph Cook
No.
Isaac Edwards
>they contain exactly the same political thought, expression of the human experience, and consideration for the progress of their artform Literally incorrect. I'm beginning to wonder if you've even read Animorphs
Lincoln Stewart
'yes'
Carson Roberts
Even worse, he wasn't even ready to publish it before dying. We'll never see that final Silmarillion he dreamed of for decades.
Chase Cooper
Same here, the sole fact this man is blocking the Hollyjews from ruining Silmarillion too with black noldors and quips makes me admire him.
Grayson King
People need to stop perpetuating the Dwarf=Jew meme.
Jews are never content to fuck off on their own and only fraternize with their own kind and just live contently in their own dwellings like Dwarves.
The only similarity is the fascination and strive for shekels.
Nolan Smith
>criticising fiction for being escapist The fuck
Jaxon Kelly
...
Mason Bailey
...
Thomas Lee
I dislike taxes but I still pay them.
Anthony Edwards
>the more she drank, the more she shat
Josiah Stewart
Humans = Christians Elves = Muslim Dwarfs = Atheist Orcs = Jew
Camden Collins
My bad, I shouldn't have implied LOTR is literature. It's the book equivalent of a "flick".
ASOIAF is the book equivalent of kino.
Landon Bailey
I think LotR is a good criticism, intentional or not, of self destructive modernity and thirst for power that can be linked to the atomic bomb, and the return of tradition from the brink of extinction.
Luke Davis
It's really sad that Christopher had to finish it for him and I wonder how he even managed to with something that complicated. Its well known that he sometimes took stuff from papers that had been multiple drafts written and erased and rewritten on them so it was hard to know what to go with as the best story or even as the most consistent. There was a rumor a few years ago that Christopher was having those documents scanned to pick up traces of graphite so that the full text of previous drafts could be fully discerned, just to make sure he didn't fundamentally ruin anything due to this kind of thing not being possible in the 70s when he first picked it up after JRR died.
Easton Russell
There is literally nothing wrong with that paragraph. It's telling that you retards always bring that non-argument to the table.
Leo Nguyen
>influenced an entire genre that to this day has not produced a single work of any artistic worth whatsoever >worthy of respect he did great business, sure, I'll give him that
Brody Young
Do you dislike terrible analogies too?
Brayden Jackson
I think the Lord of the Rings could have been done better as a series. There's just so many details and tales packed into the novel that 3 movies can't do it justice.
Josiah Nguyen
Found the teenager
Alexander Roberts
Yeah, with such masterful prose like that it's no wonder GRRM is considered to be a literary titan on the same level as JRR
Anthony Russell
GRRM has laughable prose in general. That paragraph is a great example.
Carter Bell
Not controversial enough. To get the TV audience you have to shock them every season. Sex, treachery, shallow "politics", quirkiness. That's what the TV audience wants, and why derivative shit like Spartacus and GoT managed to get 4 seasons while good stuff can't even get a pilot. LOTR would be boring for normies, and with a TV budget it'd look like Xena.
