The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Authors who inspire a movement are usually misunderstood, especially by those they have inspired, and Tolkien is no exception, but one of the biggest misconceptions about Tolkien is the idea that he is somehow an 'innovator of fantasy'. He did add a number of techniques to the repertoire of epic fantasy writers, and these have been dutifully followed by his many imitators, but for the most part, these techniques are little more than bad habits.

Many have called Tolkien by such epithets as 'The Father of Fantasy', but anyone who makes this claim simply does not know of the depth and history of the fantasy genre. For those who are familiar with the great and influential fantastical authors, from Ovid and Ariosto to Eddison and Dunsany to R. E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, it is clear that, long before Tolkien, fantasy was already a complex, well- established, and even a respected literary genre. Eddison's work contains an invented world, a carefully- constructed (and well- researched) archaic language, a powerful and unearthly queen, and a central character who is conflicted and lost between the forces of nobility and darkness. Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, which came out the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, has distant, haughty elves, deep- delving dwarves, a broken sword which must be reforged, an epic war between the armies of light and darkness, another central character trapped between those extremes, and an interweaving of Christian and Pagan worldviews. So, if these aspects are not unique to Tolkien, then what does set him apart?

Though Dunsany, Eddison, and Anderson all present worlds where light and dark come into conflict, they present these conflicts with a subtle and often ironic touch, recognizing that morality is a dangerous thing to present in absolutes. Tolkien (or C. S.

The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship Of The Ring Return of the King Two Towers Hobbit Official Movie Site : Trailer, Pictures, Wallpaper, Pic, Film, Preview.

Lewis), on the other hand, has no problem in depicting evil as evil, good as good, and the only place they meet is in the temptation of an honest heart, as in Gollum's case- -and even then, he is not like Eddison's Lord Gro or Anderson's Scafloc, characters who live under an alternative view of the world, but instead fluctuates between the highs and lows of Tolkien's dualistic morality. It is a dangerous message to make evil an external, irrational thing, to define it as 'the unknown that opposes us', because it invites the reader to overlay their own morality upon the world, which is precisely what most modern fantasy authors tend to do, following Tolkien's example. Whether it's Goodkind's Libertarianism or John Norman's sex slave fetish, its very easy to simply create a magical allegory to make one side 'right' and the other side 'wrong', and you never have to develop a dramatic narrative that actually explores the soundness of those ideas.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a 2002 New Zealand-American epic high fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson and based on the second volume of J. R. SyFy’s story of interplanetary bounty hunters Dutch, Jon Jaqobis, and D’avin Jaqobis is getting two more seasons to wrap up its story and gracefully exit the stage.

Make the good guys dress in bright robes or silvery maile and the bad guys in black, spiky armor, and a lot of people will never notice that all the 'good guys' are White, upper class men, while all the 'bad guys' are 'brutish foreigners', and that both sides are killing each other and trying to rule their little corner of the world. In Tolkien's case, his moral view was a very specific evocation of the ideal of 'Merrie England', which is an attempt by certain stodgy old Tories (like Tolkien) to rewrite history so that the nobility were all good and righteous leaders, the farmers were all happy in their 'proper place' (working a simple patch of dirt), while both industrialized cultures and the 'primitives' who resided to the South and East were 'the enemy' bent on despoiling the 'natural beauty of England' (despite the fact that the isles had been flattened, deforested, and partitioned a thousand years before). Though Tom Bombadil remains as a strangely incoherent reminder of the moral and social complexity of the fantasy tradition upon which Tolkien draws, he did his best to scrub the rest clean, spending years of his life trying to fit Catholic philosophy more wholly into his Pagan adventure realm. But then, that's often how we think of Tolkien: bent over his desk, spending long hours researching, note- taking, compiling, and playing with language. Even those who admit that Tolkien demonstrates certain racist, sexist, and classicist leanings (as, indeed, do many great authors) still praise the complexity of his 'world building'. And any student of the great Epics, like the Norse Eddas, the Bible, or the Shahnameh can see what Tolkien is trying to achieve with his worldbuilding: those books presented grand stories, but were also about depicting a vast world of philosophy, history, myth, geography, morality and culture. They were encyclopedic texts, intended to instruct their people on everything important in life, and they are extraordinarily valuable to students of anthropology and history, because even the smallest detail can reveal something about the world which the book describes.

So, Tolkien fills his books with troop movements, dull songs, lines of lineage, and references to his own made- up history, mythology, and language. He has numerous briefly- mentioned side characters and events because organic texts like the epics, which were formed slowly, over time and compiled from many sources often contained such digressions. He creates characters who have similar names- -which is normally a stupid thing to do, as an author, because it is so confusing- -but he’s trying to represent a hereditary tradition of prefixes and suffixes and shared names, which many great families of history had. So Tolkien certainly had a purpose in what he did, but was it a purpose that served the story he was trying to tell? Simply copying the form of reality is not what makes good art. Art is meaningful- -it is directed.

It is not just a list of details- -everything within is carefully chosen by the author to make up a good story. The addition of detail is not the same as adding depth, especially since Tolkien’s world is not based on some outside system- -it is whatever he says it is.

It’s all arbitrary, which is why the only thing that grants a character, scene, or detail purpose is the meaning behind it. Without that meaning, then what Tolkien is doing is just a very elaborate thought exercise. Now, it’s certainly true that many people have been fascinated with studying it, but that’s equally true of many thought exercises, such as the rules and background of the Pokemon card game, or crossword puzzles. Ostensibly, Scrabble supposedly is a game for people who love words- -and yet, top Scrabble players sit an memorize lists of words whose meaning they will never learn. Likewise, many literary fandom games become little more than word searches: find this reference, connect that name to this character- -but which have no meaning or purpose outside of that. The point of literary criticism is always to lead us back to human thought and ideas, to looking at how we think and express ourselves.

If a detail in a work cannot lead us back to ourselves, then it is no more than an arbitrary piece of chaff. The popularity of Tolkien’s work made it acceptable for other authors to do the same thing, to the point that whenever I hear a book lauded for the ‘depth of its world building’, I expect to find a mess of obsessive detailing, of piling on so many inconsequential facts and figures that the characters and stories get buried under the scree, as if the author secretly hopes that by spending most of the chapter describing the hero’s cuirass, we'll forget that he’s a bland archetype who only succeeds through happy coincidence and deus ex machina against an enemy with no internal structure or motivation. When Quiller- Couch said authors should ‘murder their darlings’, this is what he meant: just because you have hobbies and opinions does not mean you should fill your novel with them. Anything which does not materially contribute to the story, characters, and artistry of a work can safely be left out.

The Lord of the Rings Blu- ray. Original Animated Classic / Blu- ray + DVD + Digital Copy. Warner Bros. 1. Rated PG Apr 0.

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The Lord of the Rings has 443,627 ratings and 9,523 reviews. mark said: not a review and there probably won't be one any time soon. i also won't be climb. Olórin, Mithrandir, Incánus, Tharkûn, Greyhame, Old Greybeard, Gandalf the Grey, Gandalf the White, the Grey Pilgrim, Stormcrow, the White Rider, Láthspell, Big.

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"The Lord of the Rings" Book "The Lord of the Rings" is the greatest trilogy, and it immortalized the name of its creator. It consists of three parts: "The.

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The Lord of the Rings (1. PLAY TRAILERThe Lord of the Rings Blu- ray offers decent video and audio, but overall it's a mediocre Blu- ray release. Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's revered Middle- earth saga captures the dark mood of the. The film covers the first half of the trilogy- -"The Fellowship of the Ring" and the.

The Two Towers"- -as Frodo (voiced by Christopher Guard), the cousin of Bilbo Baggins from "The. Watch And Now For Something Completely Different 4Shared there. Hobbit", is given the all- powerful ring sought by the evil Sauron of Mordor. So begins his adventure, as he must. Mordor's black riders in an effort to prevent the ring from returning to its owner and thereby signaling the. Middle- earth. Even with the mighty wizard Gandalf as his ally and faithful friends Merry, Sam, and Pippin. Frodo is still up to his hobbit neck in peril. For more about The Lord of the Rings and the The Lord of the Rings Blu- ray release, see the The Lord of the Rings Blu- ray Review published by Kenneth Brown on April 1.

Blu- ray release scored 2. Director: Ralph Bakshi. Writer: Peter S. Beagle. Starring: Christopher Guard,William Squire,Michael Scholes,John Hurt,Anthony Daniels,Peter Woodthorpe» See full cast & crew.

Be careful not to spoil the ending.. Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, April 1. Brash pioneer, outspoken artist, award- winning innovator, controversial filmmaker. Director Ralph Bakshi has been all of these things and more, converting almost everyone who has crossed his path into a disciple or an enemy. Watch Oh, Mr. Porter! Tube Free. Those who've worked with him have either adored his tenacity or despised his audacity; those who've sampled his films either come to appreciate his methods and techniques or shrug their shoulders; those who've heard him speak have either warmed to his gruff candor or walked away accusing him of delusions of grandeur. Perhaps if his animated passion projects - - his watery 1. J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" chief among them - - were more inspiring films, it wouldn't matter.

But while Fritz the Cat and Coonskin continue to skate by on bad- boy charm, Fire and Ice has earned a respectable following, and Hey Good Lookin offers some worthwhile social commentary, Bakshi's Lord of the Rings hasn't aged well at all, fails on a number of fronts (as an adaptation and as a film), and continues to be defined by its studio- mangled production rather than its own merits. Anyone who isn't familiar with "The Lord of the Rings" should crack open Tolkien's finest work and devote nine hours to director Peter Jackson's wondrous adaptation (hopefully in that order) long before considering Bakshi's animated debacle. At times, Bakshi is more faithful to Tolkien's original text than Jackson; at others, he drifts as far off course as our favorite Kiwi filmmaker.

The tale itself, however, largely remains the same. When a young Hobbit named Frodo Baggins (voiced by Christopher Guard) learns that a magic ring in his possession is actually the One Ring of the Dark Lord, Sauron, he sets off for the city of Rivendell to seek the counsel of the Elf Lord, Elrond (Andre Morell). There, he joins a fellowship of friends and warriors - - heir to the human throne Aragorn (John Hurt), Elven bowman Legolas (Anthony Daniels), noble Gondorian Boromir (Michael Graham Cox), kindly wizard Gandalf (William Squire), Dwarven axeman Gimli (David Buck), and his halfing comrades Sam (Michael Scholes), Merry (Simon Chandler), and Pippin (Dominic Guard) - - who are tasked with casting the ring into the fires of Mordor where it was first forged. Their subsequent journey is naturally fraught with peril (Nazgul and orcs and goblins, oh my!), and the forces of evil seem to converge on their every position. Even when Frodo and Sam depart from the fellowship, they have to contend with the wiles of a strange creature named Gollum (Peter Woodthorpe) who definitely doesn't have their best interests at heart.

But as the ring bearers near Mount Doom and their former companions join forces with the King of Rohan (Philip Stone) for a climactic battle at Helm's Deep.. The End. Bakshi's adaptation was originally conceived as three films, and eventually whittled down to two. But when his distributors suddenly withdrew their support (after The Lord of the Rings received a chilly critical reception), all hope of a sequel was lost. Would a proper conclusion have redeemed the first film? Sadly, no. While an ending would have been appreciated, I can only assume it would have suffered from the same problems as its maligned predecessor.

Bakshi's stately vision of Tolkien's sweeping epic is dry to say the least, and foregos the cinematic flourishes that would later make Jackson's trilogy such an intense and emotional experience. As brilliant as the original book may be, its pacing simply isn't primed for the silver screen. Imagine Jackson dropping a "Seventeen Years Later" title card between Frodo's acquisition of the ring and Gandalf's fireside explanation of its origin.) As a result, Bakshi tends to tiptoe when he should charge, dance when he should dig in, and skip when he should run. It doesn't help that the vast majority of the voice actors fail to convey much urgency or anxiety in their deliveries, exhaling their lines as if the fate of the fellowship is of little concern to its members. Guard and Squire surpass their castmates, but even their best efforts pale in comparison to their New Line brethren. Is comparing Bakshi's Rings to Jackson's a bit unfair? Perhaps, but it's also inevitable.

Both directors made arguably significant alterations to Tolkien's text; Jackson simply made wiser choices when doing so. And then of course there's Bakshi's animation. Fluid and convincing one moment, stocky and crippled the next, The Lord of the Rings isn't exactly the breathtaking beauty nostalgic cinephiles may remember it to be. Comprised of rotoscoped animation (a process in which individual frames of a live- action source are traced by hand) and solarized film footage, the end result is a mixed bag of stylistic misfires.

Bakshi's animators often capture the nuances of their performers' movements, but rarely capture the souls in their bellies or the fire in their faces. Aragorn and his companions seem listless, their eyes flat and wayward.

Subtle expressions are lost, quick glances are reduced to turns of the head, and the director's rotoscoping is too simplistic to convey a sense of texture or realism. Seeing the full twist of a twirling sword is impressive, but Disney has imbued their characters with far more spirit, even by relying on the raw talent of their animators. None of it prevents the story from taking hold - - Tolkien's words retain their potency even when Bakshi and his cast come up short - - and the battles that erupt around the ring still pulse with some of the same fervor that drives Jackson's trilogy along. And yet it all feels like a sing- songy relic; a dulled adaptation that could have been a sharp, piercing revelation. I'm sure there are those who still have great affection for Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. Me? Jackson built such a lasting Tolkien monument in my mind that I frankly don't have the stomach for anything less. Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings features a problematic 1.