this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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As someone who's never read/watched the Hobbit & LOTR universes I frankly have no clue wtf this is supposed to mean
But godspeed to you, little rat
It's an almost perfectly accurate analogy.
So, JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for his school age children. It's a novel that is designed to be read to children one chapter a night as a series of bedtime stories. It tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit enjoying his quiet life in the suburbs, being swept along on a quest along with some dwarves and a wizard to slay a dragon that stole some treasure. Along the way a series of adventures ensue, one of which involves Bilbo finding a handy magic ring that turns anyone who wears it invisible.
Several years later, Tolkien decided to write an epic trilogy of novels that tell a much more mature story in the same setting. See it turns out that the fun invisibility ring Bilbo found is an all powerful evil artifact hand crafted by the setting's equivalent of Lucifer as part of a jewelry-based ploy to take over the world in the name of evil, and the only place the ring can be destroyed is in the fires of the volcano in which it was forged in the first place. It falls on Bilbo's nephew Frodo Baggins to carry the ring from the suburbs to this volcano to destroy the ring and defeat evil once and for all.
Tolkien made it sound cooler than I just did.
That might be the single greatest description of LOTR I've ever seen lmao.
Also don't forget, if it wasn't for some old wizard who had an affinity for getting high with little people, no one would've saved the world.
Yeah, that's the biggest tell that The Hobbit wasn't designed to have the sequels it did. If Tolkien had had The Lord of the Rings in mind when he wrote The Hobbit, Gandalf would have recognized the One Ring when he saw it.
Not necessarily. There were several lower rings out there in the world. The One Ring had been lost since thousands of years. I don't remember what Saruman tells the wizards about it exactly, but essentially, it is probably lost for ages, and Gandalf trusted his wisdom at the time.
When Gandalf meets Frodo at the start of LOTR, he tells him he was getting increasingly suspicious about this ring, and started doing researchs on it, until there was no doubt anymore that this was the One Ring. Tossing it into the fire is only an ultimate confirmation.
You made it sound way cool, too, great tl;dr! And I did read the books as a kid
I never got through Return of the King. Twice I slogged through Fellowship and Two Towers, I got a few pages into Return of the King and I was just done with it. I didn't care enough about these characters or this world, I couldn't tell what was relevant or what wasn't, so to this day I haven't read the last book, and the events of the first two have run together in my mind as a beige DnD scented sludge.
I sat through the first movie in the theater with some friends in like 9th grade and once again I remember it as a series of spectacular visuals and a bunch of characters I didn't give a shit about. Without my permission this became one of only five things pop culture was allowed to care about for the rest of my life.
Also, go watch the Lord of the Rings movies! They're incredible.
seconded! but only the original trilogy. the rest are trash (maybe this only is true for those who love the books idk)
What do you mean by original trilogy? No extended versions?
sorry i was unclear. i mean the original 3 films that have Elijah Wood etc. i recommend the extended edition only because some of the cuts they made for the theater release removed some context that was kinda important to understand what all is going on, unless you already know the story. the Hobbit movies are all terrible in my opinion and i haven't bothered finishing them. but that's because they barely resemble the books at all and are full of characters and situations that shouldn't be in them. i recommend the book if you want to know what it's about, it's a much easier read than the trilogy.
I've heard the maple edit of the hobbit corrects many errors, but haven't had 4+ hours to spend on it yet.
Never read the books, the other ones are boring. Aint watched rings of power too busy settlin' grudges.
Throws red haired murder hobos at schizophrenic rats
I love the books and I still enjoyed Rings of Power. I might be the only person who did though. My wife won't even watch it after trying half an episode. But of course the original trilogy is a masterwork, possibly the best movies ever made.
Watching it wouldnt help you in this case since.. artistic choices in adapting it lol
Read The Hobbit. Watch LOTR. (Yes, one should read LOTR too, but we’re just trying to omit the ridiculous changes in the film adaptation of The Hobbit.)
The Tolkien Edit supercut of The Hobbit movies throws out everything that wasn't in the book. Mostly. The editor could only do so much.
I saw that. It was as good as they could do with what they were given. It wasn’t bad, but you could definitely tell there were missing parts.
At least please try to watch the movies. They and the books really are worth every bit of hype you’re heard.
The Hobbit was meant for kids. Then Tolkien was like, "what if I took that story that was meant for kids and wrote a really long, complicated series of sequels to it that kids of the right age to read The Hobbit will probably get bored with and stop reading half-way through the first book?"
Nothing against LOTR, I'm just doubtful most 10-year-olds read it.
It is my understanding that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for his kids when they were of bedtime story age, and then wrote The Lord of the Rings for them when they were young adults and ready for a more mature story. It's not his fault everyone else for the rest of time wouldn't have that built-in delay.
LOTR was not written for children. It was literary fiction to talk about Tolkien's experiences with the Great war mixed with a lot of his philology studies. Some even say the LOTR world was just Tolkien's excuse to use his constructed languages. The Hobbit existed first as loose night time stories for his own kids that got formalized as a book and had no concept of the wider LOTR lore. The success inspired him to write another book, for a wider audience and more complex themes. Then he decided that the Hobbit could be made to fit into the overall world building of middle earth. So he made changes to both books so they fit together. That's why the first and second edition of The Hobbit are actually a bit different.
It’s literature, broadly speaking, and was never intended to be specifically for children. I think he wrote the Hobbit for children and LOTR for himself.
He had already created the playground, now he wanted to explore it.