Spoiler Alert!

[Bêthberry]

I've never really got into the spoilers thing--I find it difficult to appreciate how it affects some people. This perhaps is because, as a student of early literature, I was accustomed to reading literature that was not valued for novelty or newness but for aesthetics--that is, how the author put the story together rather than what the story was about. (The novel starting in the 18th century blew this away.) Although there are sixty plus years between my education and Tolkien's, essentially I was trained in the similar historical method that he was.

I suppose in one way I was spoiled for the movies by having seen a live theatre performance of The Hobbit. The actor who played Gollem was superb--both an actor and a gymnast--and no matter how well Andy Serkis portrayed Gollem, I had in my mind vivid memories of an actual person who surpassed and exceeded the CGI antics, with all the tangible immediacy of live performance.

But I have to admit that watching the first Hobbit movie definitely spoiled the following two for me--I haven't had any interest in seeing them.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

But I have to admit that watching the first Hobbit movie definitely spoiled the following two for me--I haven't had any interest in seeing them.

Heehee. I'm only a little disappointed that those movies weren't spoiled for me sooner.


My LOTR timetable went approximately like this (give or take a year in age):

5 y/o: My mother reads LOTR aloud to me in Russian. I understand very little because I can't even keep track of the nine names of the Fellowship (I recall asking her at the end of the Fellowship who was Boromir. Somehow I thought he was one of the bad guys - I think I mixed him up with Sauron or Saruman - and I was glad that he died).

6-9 y/o: I watch the movies. I understand very little because my English is horrible, but it helps clarify the basic plot. Unfortunately, it also implants several physical images into my head.

9-12 y/o: I reread LOTR several times, know what goes where, who is who, etc. Movie images still stick.

12-13 y/o: I become obsessed with LOTR and won't read anything else. I read the First age stuff and The Hobbit. I try to memorize every detail of everything in the books. I join the Downs.

13-15 y/o: I am on a quest to reread everything in English and augment my Tolkien with non-canonic material.



As of now, if I concentrate, I am able to override the movie images of LOTR with more accurate ones. This isn't a problem for TH - my mental pictures were too set to be perturbed by the movies. But I've noticed even recently that occasionally little things like the appearance and number of orcs, or like the looks or voices of some characters, are still closer to the movie than the book. So in that sense, the movies spoiled the book for me, but not in the plot or character development sense.

[IxnaY AintsaY]

If you are interested in Hobbits you learn a lot more about them in The Lord of the Rings:

1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
2. THE TWO TOWERS
3. THE RETURN OF THE KING

Little did I know! That was the postscript at the end of the incredible story I'd just read, when I was nine or ten. Not much of a hint, really, let alone a spoiler, but enough to make me race back to the library as soon as I could to seize these additional three--three!--books the author had promised me. The problem was, they had #1 and #3, but #2 was on sabbatical. When was it coming back? It didn't matter, it wasn't there then...and by 'then' I mean 'now' or rather, 'NOW'. I took what I could, and told myself that by the time I was done with the first book, the second would certainly be available.

But I read Fellowship in about a day, and I don't think I really considered for more than a moment waiting to start Return. I finished that the same weekend, untangling the knotted plot strings as best I could, knowing where the ends were, but very unclear about the middles. By the time the missing book finally came into my hands, a long time (by my standards) had passed, and I'd read the other books at least once more.

I've read The Two Towers many times now, but there's still a little bit of a strangeness to it that I don't get from the other books. I don't truly know if or how much of that is due to me jumping ahead back at the beginning, but it does feel like maybe a little spark of unfamiliarity is still smoldering there.

Anyway, that's the story of how I spoiled the entire middle portion of LoTR for myself, back in the depths of time.

(I'm glad this topic has come up. Among other things it has made me ponder a bit on how ridiculously tempting spoilers are for me in general, and how much my pleasure in rooting about in HOME might be coming from a neighborhood in my heart just a few blocks over from that.)

[Nerwen]

Well, my mother certainly did her best to "spoil" The Lord of the Rings for me, but due to my tender years and her rather unique explanatory style, the impression I got was that it concerned Bilbo's nephew running away to join a circus. I was really quite surprised when I got around to reading it...

[Belegorn]

I don't recall being spoiled for a LotR movie. I don't know if spoilers have that big of an effect if you've read the story some movie is an adaption of, Hannibal, Dune, LotR, etc.