Tag: tolkien

  • Bilbo > Frodo.

    Bilbo > Frodo.

    I’ve always preferred The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. The first book may be silly, but it’s fun. It doesn’t demand a fortnight to read. It doesn’t get bogged down in faux-history. Most importantly, The Hobbit boasts a more interesting main character. Yes, Bilbo is ridiculous and stuck-up and pretentious. But he’s also…

  • I was an elderly hobbit.

    I was an elderly hobbit.

    Once upon a time, I was an elderly hobbit. Or, at least, I played one online. ElendorMUSH is an Internet-based role-playing game set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth universe (familiar from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). The “MUSH” stands for “Multi-User Shared Hallucination.” Each new user creates a character, choosing a race (e.g. hobbit,…

  • You got Aragorn in my Bilbo!

    Recently, Daniel Wood suggested that Peter Jackson’s next two Hobbit movies should feature cameos from Aragorn, Gimli, Denethor, Arwen, Merry, Pippin and Sam. This is a terribly dumb idea. First of all, at the time of The Hobbit… Aragorn is 9. Denethor II is 12. Merry, Pippin and Sam are –40, –48 and –38, respectively.…

  • First things first (part 2): why Peter Jackson should have made Lord of the Rings after The Hobbit

    Last time, I explained why, in an ideal world, Peter Jackson would have tackled The Hobbit first (before The Lord of the Rings). But what would this have meant for The Hobbit’s bigger, more serious older brother? Of course, much depends on how well The Hobbit performed at the box office. But let’s assume that…

  • First things first: why Peter Jackson should have made The Hobbit before The Lord of the Rings

    Back in the mid-nineties, Peter Jackson had a problem. He (and his creative partners) had unveiled plans to film J.R.R. Tolkien’s most celebrated novels, using their native New Zealand as a stand-in for Middle-Earth. They hoped to make The Hobbit—chronologically, the series’ initial book—first. But Jackson’s producers failed to secure rights for The Hobbit. Undeterred,…