I just intended to write something short, my thoughts from rereading the book, but it grew and grew...

I recently reread Lord of the Rings. My first reading of it was as a teenager in the late 70s. In Swedish. The original translation. I might have read that version three times. Later I read it in English original.

After the films came out, there was a new Swedish translation. The old one had some problems, but the new one wasn't genius, either, even if it had made some interesting and/or better choices. I read The Fellowship, and decided I would skip the rest. Also because I by then read the English original, if any. I do not think I have reread the old translation since then, either. The original translator named the books "Sagan om Ringen", "The Saga of The Ring", which sounds a bit corny in English. In Swedish it works, as saga usually means a tale, but it also alludes to the old Norse sagas. I think most Swedes refer to it as Sagan om Ringen, even if the do not like the old translation.

I still have the 1978 edition, bound books with the original cover slips intact. Those books are very dear to me, even if I probably will never reread them. The Swedish author and illustrator Inger Edelfeldt made the cover images. I tried to find them now on the web, but couldn't. I did find some sketches she had made. Maybe I could scan them and put them up here. Tolkien's own art I like, but she used a very different style. Really beautiful.

The films were in many ways amazing works. When I first heard about them, and that they planned a trilogy. I was kind of flabbergasted that anyone dared do that, as well as excited what they could become. I remember seeing the trailer the first time, on the web, maybe on Apple's media site where they promoted quicktime as streaming media (probably indirectly also WebObjects?). It just looked great and it was both exciting and strange to see real actors be the Fellowship.

The work around it was just amazing- I still have the box set of the extended versions, and in there there is a lot of documentary about the other work, weapons training, clothing, horses, building models and scenes and even buildings. Just an astonishing work that may not be repeated in its scope. Especially with all the contemporary digital nonsense 😛

I was bothered that Samwise had U.S. accent. These days I do not hear it. The actors were for the most part great, noone was bad. There are too many blond elves, that was just a dumb decision. Merry and Pippin was a bit too silly at times. Gimli is sometimes a comedy sidekick. That's wrong :p

To make a film of a book, you have to write a script that works, but there were just some pointless rewriting of stuff that still makes it worse than the books. To skip Tom Bombadill is not bad, he is not integral to the story as most other things are. And he is still a very puzzling figure, even for the nerds. It took me decades to see him as nothing else as a silly and helpful forest gnome. This latest time I read it, I enjoyed old Tom more than ever. He is part of the world building.

The Scouring of the Shire is a great integrated part of the story, of the saga, of the mythos. There is no time for that in film, more than alluded to when Frodo (in the book it is Sam) looks into Galadriel's mirror. LOTR has several endings, and maybe hard to put them all in a film. Maybe someday someone could make a nine part series, incl some backstory and maybe even some things from the appendix?

They had to shorten the story, even in a trio of films. Of course, the extended versions are the best (the only?) way to watch them. But some choices does not make much sense. I am talking about the screenplay, not the actors. Why is Aragorn getting the sword later? One scene I love is when the three meet Eomer on the plains. Some of it is in the film, but the book scene is not much longer, but just better. Without the sword something is lacking.

Aragorn's doubts are also a bit overplayed. He had about seventy years of preparing to be King; he fought harder than anyone. Being the chosen one does not give anything for free. The movies make him slightly less royal than he is in the book. Viggo is Strider, but not fully king like. Now, to have that in the film would maybe be very hard, and Aragorn is still (also) Strider until he dies. But he is also the king, born to be king. The film misses out on this a bit, imho.

Faramir is also wiser and in some sense harder (to himself) than in the film. The film might try to make Faramir more "human". But some of the epic quality is lost. More psychology and drama, less myth. To be fair, Faramir's character when we first meet him could have been slightly more developed in the book. Without losing his Numenorian traits. Eowyn also is "softened" in the film. She is more cold steel in the book.

Christopher Tolkien said somewhere he thought the films were too much of action films. What struck me more for each reading is that there is often a more theatrical and epic feeling to the dialogues in the book. I think they could have kept more of it. It would also have been a more old style movie, I guess. Ian McKellen is a stage actor, and it shows. He is a great Gandalf. Christopher Lee certainly was not a Shakespeare actor, but he is just perfect as Saruman. In the book he still has more of the old seducing power of his voice, but we cannot have everything. Saruman is a politician. Devoted to machines. He probably would have been obsessed with computers and "AI". So many Sarumans, so few Gandalfs.

One must also remember that LOTR before the films was of course read by millions, but it was still a nerd thing. For example, I think few of my age peers ever read them.

Anyhow, I reread LOTR recently. This was maybe 4th or 5th time I read it in English. Including the appendix. Because that is what real readers do 😉

Real nerds read LOTR every year, plus almost everything else. I am not that much of a Tolkien nerd. I have read Silmarillion a few times, first when it came out in Swedish in early 1980s. It has certainly grown on me. It is a different type of story. I have read other things he wrote, a few books about him, but not the History of Middle Earth series.

I have listened to podcasts and lectures and some YT videos over the years, and one thing I learnt is that one cannot fully appreciate the books without a Christian perspective. Tolkien wrote in 1953 (before the publication): "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."

That does not mean one cannot enjoy the books as a non-Christian. It is a great story about friendship, struggle, good and evil, the fall and redemption of men and other beings. Many are put to the test. All in a very intricate world, which Tolkien worked on long before the book was published. I certainly loved his books long before anyone mentioned the Christian "elements". It was not as obvious as in e.g. C.S. Lewis' Narnia. I just see more now in Tolkien's stories.

The only podcast I subscribe to that is dedicated to Tolkien is Amon Sûl. It is from an Orthodox perspective, with recurrent guests, not all Orthodox, always very knowledgeable. It is very detailed, the episodes become longer and longer. Lots of interesting discussions, with seriousness and humour. Recommended.

I think I thought of more things when I decided to login, but I forgot.

Addendum: I continued my rant in a later post.