Description
All reviews of the whole series combined for your convenience and to help me lazy procrastinator create another review copy and paste style
The fellowship of the ring
Founding a genre like a boss
Stealing everything possible from mythology and the, maybe sometimes a tiny bit boring, old, classics.
The beloved tradition of using others’ ideas to create something new is big here, especially because Tolkien had the perfect background to milk everything from wherever he could find inspirations, from ancient to medieval and, at the time, modern works. It would especially be interesting to read or reread LotR with a focus on how he let the classics mutate to new forms, transformed oldfashioned tropes to fit for a modern audience, and especially made it a compelling, well written, and suspenseful pageturner. Don´t be angry, good old classics, it´s not your fault, your poor creators just had no creative writing courses available or were hunted by the inquisition, or it were total monopolies to that their works were the only ones available, and thereby never cared about royalties, book signing tours, or target audiences.
Black, white, and the most important grey
The pure, camouflages fascistic, evil, is of course as noir as possible, but especially the sexy seductiveness of the mind penetrating psi magic of the distilled badassery, is one of the main driving engines of the groundbreaking epic journey, because good old almightiness totally corrupts. It´s just normal that everyone is struggling with the whispering of the dark side with all its attractive options and the real life implications of this are, well, terrible, frustrating, and daunting. Throw money at close to everyone and she/he will get corrupted, especially if the alternative is to get eaten by orcs while the family is raped by Uruk hais and Balrogs.
Establishing cliffhangery ends of single parts
One just can´t stop, this damn, evil tendency of the genre to stop at the most suspenseful part and let the reader hanging to wait for felt eternities. As if Sauron wasn´t bad enough, this vicious cycle continues with each new, far too multi k page series and eats away the lives of poor, innocent humans, not to speak of their tormented souls that can´t find peace over these nauseating periods of despair and regret to have been relapsing. Again! I´m not sure if Tolkien should be praised or damned for having laid the foundations for things like Sandersons´, Jordans´, Eriksons´, etc. amazingly exhausting and immersive monster series. I´m ashamed to admit it, but I have the whole, good old second hand paperback, Wheel of time series ‚(and the new ones) lying around and I am afraid to restart reading the whole thing (not just the first few parts like a few years ago), because I fear that it could trigger reading and rereading other series and finally Wheel of time again until 2027 or something, not just having lost contact to reality (not much difference to the present reality https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=…
), but, much more problematic, to all other genres for half a decade or something. Thanks for that, J.R.R!
Being attacked by the bigoted academic society of the time
That´s just ridiculous, Tolkien had to hide and vindicate his amazing work, because it wasn´t highbrow enough for his snobbish, elitist, and old, boring, so called quality literature prone, colleagues and a bigoted, conservative society that wasn´t ready for something new. Better stay with theater texts as books or whatever can be used for patriotic „our writer“ idiocy. Just bad luck that there aren´t enough good, if any, old writers for each country to fuel feelings of literary supremacy. However, it´s one more of these examples of how parochial even seemingly well educated and sophisticated people can be as soon as it comes to close to their cognitive dissonances and socioeconomic status hierarchy overkill.
Putting in meta, connotations, and social criticism
Tolkien was heavily influenced and inspired by war, and the atrocities humans so much love to do to each other until nasty nukes eliminated the option of more WW action, and put the real life implications everywhere in his work. Not just in the form of the big, bad government cooperating with war industry, propaganda machines, and black magic, but with
Corrupted blood
The banality of evil, the attractiveness of the dark side is, as mentioned in „Black, white, and…“ above, is one of the driving forces of the saga and without Tolkiens´experiences, it might have stayed much more superficial and have never reached that deep level of human soul and psyche vivisection. The same with love, without his lifelong, deep bound to this adored wife, he wasn´t allowed to see until reaching full age, the importance of emotions maybe wouldn´t have unfolded and played such an essential role in the work. Expanding this whole, philosophical, psychological somewhat assumptions to his profession as a philologist and, for the standards of the time, mad professor, would go a bit too far, but let´s just say that his expertise might have helped him create both Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings.
Is it outdated?
Very objective thing, even if not including the sociocultural, immense literary impact, Tolkien invested a bit more than the usual fantasy writer in her/his third or fourth series with a new one each new year. Just take the mentioned Silmarillion, the immense details of the world, all the links to the cultural heritage, and the sheer scale and size, and, on top of that, close to everyone agrees that it´s a timeless, genre founding, ingenious masterpiece that will stand the test of not just time, but eternity. Sure, it´s not as accessible as the average, new, overhyped world bestseller, but that´s the same as with Lem, Lovecraft, etc., authors just were used to write in that wacky, overcomplicated, intricate, and difficult to digest language, because they were no narcissistic, lazy, self aggrandizing, god complexed hedonists. I won´t excuse for that, I´m one myself and have N word privileges.
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Comparing and contrasting fantasy with other genres
Horror, Sci-Fi, or crime had no similar big bangs (fringe theory, by the way, to provoke and insult even more additional people than with just the human degeneration gag above lol) but different founders, prodigies, and subgenres, while fantasy was, stayed, and will be very genre compliant, not to say a bit inflexible in contrast to other genres with much vaster differences, especially sci fi, my bread and peanut butter. So one could say that close to every, no matter if grimdark, YA, high, epic, romantic, etc. fantasy, is always quite the same with some variations of magic systems, the balance of focus on protagonists or antagonists, tone, and the rare establishment of the one or other sub sub genre.
The endless evolution
Close to all human mythology, faith, myths, etc. is fantasy and I see one of its biggest potentials in a fusion to science fantasy, because it opens up all options including any horror or psychothriller crime plot. Without Tolkien, this amazing development couldn´t have taken place
so soon and it would have probably needed much longer to establish the (I´m a sci-fi head, sorry) second best genre to subjugate and enslave them all.
The two towers
Bromancing to Mordor while Middle Earth falls to pieces
Split personality overkill
Golluming through life is a hard task, especially if it´s that freaking long. Too many different psychological, sociological, etc implications to name them all, but poor Smeagols’ quest towards looking freaking emo zombie style could easily be seen as the decision between happiness and sadness, the seductive potential of power, or simply the easygoing simplicity of evil. It could also be seen as the perverting energy of power, with the good old saying that total perversion totally corrupts, that good people get nasty as soon as they get money, influence, or a fancy invisible mindpenetrating bling bling, that would also be a fantastic bluetooth fingerset to always stay in touch with your evil overlord.
Planning and preparation is everything
After everything has been established in the first part, the whole scenery can lift off, get far darker and hopeless, introduce new friends, foes, and people not sure which to choose, and in general create the outline for the genre itself. I assume that the mysticism, nerdgasms, and glorification around Tolkiens´ work and its immense impact make it (subjectively for me too, not even mentioning the nostalgic touch) one of the most fertile cornerstones of the maybe biggest popular fictional genre.
new brand of evil with a touch of übersoldier breeding program
Another milestone, leads to even more suspense and includes the always and forever important rule of warfare of pimping ones´ killer machines to let them Chuck the heck out of every enemy. At least until automatization and robotization of warfare sets in and lets each soft bloodbag fall into pieces miles away from the unbeatable killer machines. Except the fantasy fractions have magic and mind controlling psi-powers. However, this dynamic leads to an even more suspenseful and action loaded plot than just one evil fraction united in darkening the world forever.
A full picture of the world.
Now the reader can enjoy so many different settings, cultures, traditions, and even a bit of political power balance, that it feels kind of relaxing to switch to Sam and Frodo from time to time for some good, old fight for survival without complicated following the big picture actions.
It may be appropriate to read the Silmarillion too to get even more out of this. It´s as difficult to read as the classics that inspired Tolkien and that were adapted by him, but directly linked to the backstory and history of the actions, so maybe the better and not as dry alternative. Still just something for the really hardcore fangirl/boy enthusiasts out there.
No banality of evil
Nearly all antagonists have no grey areas, no moral dilemmas, no option to change towards the better, and that may be one of the biggest differences in contrast to modern fantasy, where these eclectic evildoers often have backstory, tragedy, depth, etc. explaining what made them the creatures they are. Not giving excuses for what they do, but making them feel more human/inhuman if they´re fantasy creatures (bad wordplay), and their actions comprehensible and not just evil. In the good old times, it was clear which was the team to promote, but meanwhile, it has become a tricky, ethical dilemma with far too many implications, innuendos, and stuff.
Preparing for the endfight
As in many great series, everything is interconnected and the whole thing accelerates towards a great cliffhanger, letting one ask what might both meta and personally happen to all those freaking fascinating fantasy fighters. Classy “ buy the next part to know how it will go on“ dynamic, something that has stolen estimated hundreds of millions of days of lifetime of poor, addicted, fantasy readers.
Must read the Wheel of time series….
Thanks for that, JRR!
Establishing fantasy supertropes
Na matter if it are the fractions, superhuman elves, monster orcs, grumpy dwarfs, wise wizards, brave halflings, etc, the heroes journey, the switching between fast and slow pace, the cuts between meta fights, battles and the preparation of these and the personal, emotional scenes and the big, epic scenes including all characters, Tolkien defined the genre in a way maybe nobody else may ever have the influence to do. He not just inspired so many great fantasy authors, but indirectly helped creating so many sub-genres that are more and more expanding to subsubs, and I can remember hearing rumors about something like a subsubsub somewhere in the regions of dark science fantasy, but I don´t really trust the alien succubus who whispered it in my ear and assume that it was just a cheap trick to get me laid where she wanted me to go for a quest. But not again, honey!
The Return of the King
I´ll just wear the ring one more, last, short time, and then really go to rehab
Letting the established storylines collide in an epic culmination
That´s what most fantasy, no matter if high, science, or dark, series keep doing, no matter if it are 3, 5, or 10 parts. Tolkien accelerates the story engine towards an end that has already been prepared and enabled in the first 2 parts of the series, letting it feel like one, big piece. Another genre milestone that escalates to ridiculous lengths and perfection in many fantasy series and makes them so addictive.
The big longtime impact is uncomparable to other genres
Of course, sci fi and horror have their prodigies and milestones too, but they can go and splitter in many different subgenres, focus on psychological elements with characterization, or just epic battle and splatter, but fantasy is extremely genre standard focused regarding what to deliver and hasn´t that much room for experiments, kind of traditional in what it should deliver. And Tolkien set the standards for it, showed how to do it, and helped to inspire the production of dozens of great series, hundreds of average ones, and an innumerable amount of fanfiction. Of course, his inspiration came from the millennia of storytelling that formed the works he took for his reinterpretations, so any aspiring fantasy author could see her/himself as an ancestor of a tradition to not just pass the stories themselves. But the much more important part, the ability to tell them, to use tropes and creative writing to hypnotize readers and eat away their lifetime with multi k behemoths of fantasy series.
Bromance gets tragic
The, some may say a bit too intense gaytrix style, Frodo Sam relationships gets tragic, because as so often with substance abuse, both body and soul get ruined by it and the ones who suffer are family and friends. One could go one more meta step and say that it´s not just addiction, but ideological contamination too, that extremism and faith poison the minds of normally friendly people who carry their toxicity home and make living together hell. Because, all in all, it´s
Fascism crushed by united, different fractions that understand that they´re just powerful together as one population of Middle earth, no matter how small and hairy or angular eared they may be.
Another heavy one, the ending can be seen in many different ways, from just a megalomaniac battle overkill to the deeper meanings of the journeys that make the victory of the good ones possible. Or that everyday people don´t understand the power they could have if they would work together against a dictatorship, economic inequality, and grievances. Or that the evil is still lurking in everyone and that it takes a permanent struggle to keep the peace by controlling the inner demons. Endless interpretations until eternity beyond the straight road to Aman.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
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