Sunday, December 22, 2024
Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim
Friday, December 13, 2024
Rings of Power Season 2
My reviews of Rings of Power Season II, complete without outtakes, extras and lots of digressions is now available as a smart little PDF. It costs $6.50/£5.00 (plus the Apple Tax, unfortunately).
But I would prefer it is you did NOT buy it, and instead signed up to my Patreon (pledging $1 each time I write a Thing) in which case you get it for free.
Sunday, December 01, 2024
XI: Discourse
Rings of Power
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X: History
Rings of Power
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Saturday, November 30, 2024
IX: Sources
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Friday, November 29, 2024
VIII: Fantasy
I think it would look slightly reactionary, slightly racist, slightly superficial, and slightly silly. It would look, in fact, as exactly as it looks to the literati who haven't read it: a stream of mumbo-jumbo and psychedelia.
But none of this matters. Because Tolkien's fairy-tale archetypes, do, in fact, exist in a world with past, with a mythology, even a theology. C.S Lewis said that when you scratch Middle-earth, you find history underneath. Nine-tenth of the time, that history is not literary sleight of hand, but an allusion to manuscripts which actually existed and would one day be published.
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Thursday, November 28, 2024
VII: World Building
But does this matter? Does this really, really matter?
The simple answer is that if Rings of Power were giving me something else, anything else, to enjoy it probably wouldn't. As long as I Dreamed a Dream is a good song it hardly matters if Schonberg and Boubil take liberties with Victor Hugo's enormously long novel.
But the Rings of Power proves, experimentally and empirically, that orcs and dark lords and hobbits, in an of themselves, detached from the lore and the mythos and the world building that Tolkien spent sixty years tinkering with, are not remotely interesting. There are dwarfy caves and there are hobbity burrows, and the caves and the burrows look quite pretty, but if I wanted to look at whimsical interiors I am not at all sure that I don't prefer the Clangers.
I'm fairly serious. Oliver Postgate's world building, although it consists entirely of surfaces, is second to none; and the CGI extension of his work, overseen by his son, develops it very imaginatively. It would be silly to talk about Clanger Lore or Clanger Mythos or Clanger Canon. It's a puppet show. But the experience of watching those puppets is a little like staring into a very intricate aquarium.
There are worlds which seem real because they feel real. And there are worlds which seem real because there is solid world building behind them. Stars Wars and the Clangers in the first category: the Lord of the Rings and Thomas the Tank Engine are in the second.
And there are worlds which do have solid world building behind then but which don't feel in the least bit real, like your first Dungeons & Dragons campaign and the Harry Potter books. But perhaps that means that the world building isn't that solid after all.
Rings of Power
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Tuesday, November 26, 2024
VI: Adaptation
But some of the people who had read Lord of the Rings three times were rather discombobulated by what Peter Jackson did with the Two Towers. They felt that he had pretty much abandoned Tolkien's storyline. And they thought that what he had replaced it with was, on the whole, a bit too silly: CGI hyenas, elvish cavalry, skateboarding elves and dwarf-tossing.
Some people didn't think this mattered and enjoyed the film on its own terms. But when some of the people in the first group expressed their disappointment that Jackson's Theoden had only a passing connection with Tolkien's Theoden and that Jackson's Helm's Deep had no connection at all with Tolkien's Helm's Deep, some of the people in second group embarked on a campaign of gate-leaver-openingism.
Actually, Peter Jackson pretty consistently got his elvish inscriptions right: it was the broader stylistic decisions -- the Moria theme park ride, the fist fight in Theoden's hall, the Indiana Jones cliffhanger on Mount Doom -- that some of us had issues with.
Rings of Power
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Monday, November 25, 2024
V: Gatekeeping
If I say that 1970s Doctor Who was the best Doctor Who (which it obviously was) it does not follow that I am declaring the ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteen and fourteenth Doctor's non-canonical. And even if I am, that does not mean that I am declaring that the tapes should be expunged. And even if I am, no-one is likely to pay any attention to me. Your enjoyment of Jodie Whitaker is not impacted by my enjoyment of Tom Baker, any more than my enjoyment of Tom Baker is impacted by your enjoyment of Jodie Whitaker.
Rings of Power
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Saturday, November 23, 2024
IV: Fantasy
Please read the next paragraph before throwing your computer out of the window.
Tolkien created a new thing. We can see him creating it, right there on the page, as part of a dialogue with his friends in the pub: the fantasy novel. There had been fantasy stories before, obviously. And there had been novels about wizards and magic, not all of them necessarily for children. And there had been modern prose romances -- that line that goes from William Morris to ER Eddison via Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell. But a long prose work about dragons and goblins, told in the narrative voice of a naturalistic novel was something new and strange. As if Enid Blyton had developed Toytown in the style and on the scale of Middlemarch and turned Big Ears into a tragic hero.
Which might, as I always say at this point, have been awesome.
Tolkien didn't have a novelistic model in mind when he began creating his, if you insist, legendarium. Or he wouldn't have written "know then aforetimes that in the days of Inwe" on the one hand or "this for their hearts uplifting did Halog sing them as the frowning fortress clasped then and nethermost night in its net caught them" on the other.
I don't think the pictures we see in our head when we read Lord of the Rings are necessarily the pictures that Tolkien wanted us to see. The Pauline Baynes map illustrations he partially endorsed; and that Jimmy Cauty poster that everyone had on their wall in the 1970s are a long way from Peter Jackson and even further from World of Warcraft. Tolkien never quite told us what a balrog looked like. He didn't describe orcs, but I think he probably imagined them as rough, grotesque, humans; not piggy faced Games Workshop miniatures or dark skinned CGI ogrons. Lord of the Rings begat Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons begat Games Workshop and Games Workshop begat genre fantasy and genre fantasy begat Peter Jackson and Peter Jackson begat the Rings of Power and there is now a Consensus Fantasy Universe which these kinds of stories happen in.
I spent a lot of time playing Dungeons & Derivatives and feel quite at home in Consensus Fantasy Land. But if all you see in Lord of the Rings are ugly orcs and beautiful elves and funny dwarves and talking trees and grey wizards and dark lords on dark thrones in lands where there are very probably some shadows, you are only seeing about 12% of what Tolkien actually does.
I once said that I liked Dickens, apart from the Dickensian parts. I am quite tempted to add that I like Tolkien apart from the Tolkienesque bits: at any rate, the Tolkienesque bits are not the bits I like the most. It's the operatic dialogue and the mock epic scenes which I return to over and over again. This will I take as a weregild of my father. Through the fate of Arda is bound up in it, you will think me generous. Master of doom by doom mastered. Nevertheless they will still have need of wood.
And the little character moments too. Sam sulking because the farmer gave Frodo a slap when he was little. Pippin wanting to quit smoking because he misses Theoden. The rabbit stew. Silly songs in the bath-tub. There are no Games Workshop box sets recreating those scenes.
So am I, after all, a gate keeper? Am I saying that if you go to Tolkien to get your fix of orcs and wizards but have not the slightest interest in variant reading of the Lay of Lethien then you are a Dyson Airblade? [*]
Rings of Power
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Friday, November 22, 2024
III: Canon
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Thursday, November 21, 2024
II: Canon
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Wednesday, November 20, 2024
I - Gatekeeping
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Digression
I must not digress.
Digression is the blog-killer.
Digression is the general point which brings total excursus.
I will ignore my digression.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will fire up scrivener and read my notes.
When the digression has finished there will be nothing.
Only content will remain.
Rings of Power - Afterparty
RINGS OF POWER
AFTER PARTY
Season 2 Reviews
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Season 2 Reviews (Book) (Available Soon)
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Saturday, August 31, 2024
The Rings of Power
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power with an open mind.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because I watched Season One of the Rings of Power.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because there were sequences in Season One of the Rings of Power which I didn't actively hate.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because I am mildly curious about where they are going to go with it.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power out of morbid curiosity.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because everyone will be talking about it.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because whether I do or not, people are going to ask me what I thought of it.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because I have already foresworn Doctor Who and I don't want to make a habit of doing that kind of thing as I edge towards old age.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because the Lord of the Rings is an important component of my identity: lower down than Doctor Who and Spider-Man but higher up than Star Wars and Richard Wagner.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power as a stand alone entity, casting Season One entirely from my mind.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because I like Tolkien, cheap Tolkien knock-offs, and knock-offs of cheap Tolkien knock-offs.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power because I miss playing Dungeons & Dragons. [*]
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power for the dragons, dark lords, goblins, elves, trolls, balrogs, dwarves, sword fights, bows and arrows, shiny armour, +2 magic swords.
I will watch Season Two of Rings of Power entirely without reference to the Akallabeth or the Tale of Years because frankly only a saddo would watch a movie about the early history of an imaginary world and expect it to have anything at all to do with what the original author wrote about the early history of that imaginary world.
I will watch Season Two of the Rings of Power as if I were playing a moderately decent M.E.R.P [**] campaign in which only some of the other players have read the books.
I will permit the Rings of Power Season Two to pass over me and through me.
Read my essays on Season One of Rings of Power.
Sunday, February 26, 2023
The Fall of Numenor
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
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