Tolkien Bio-pic

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I agree, unless it's to point to the "forcible" conversion of Edith.

Or to portray Father Francis as a bigoted, tyrannical ogre. And probably a pedophile.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Couple of points re: the second trailer

Why cast an actor who looks nothing whatsoever like Tolkien? Christ, they could at least have dyed his hair blonde.

Why cast an American as Edith? And even if she can successfully pull off RP (which she speaks in the trailer)- Edith spoke Brum her entire life

Although they do put Wiseman in naval uniform, the idea of the 4 TCBS in uniform together doesn't work (Tolkien delayed signing up until after graduation).

Why would Tolkien have a vision of a Black Rider in this timeframe? His imagination was entirely in the First Age.

One also gets what looks like an image of JRRT charging across No Man's Land with an SMLE and Bayonet. Tolkien was a signals officer, he didn't "charge" anywhere and all he carried for weaponry was a Webley Mk VI revolver.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Why would Tolkien have a vision of a Black Rider in this timeframe? His imagination was entirely in the First Age.

One also gets what looks like an image of JRRT charging across No Man's Land with an SMLE and Bayonet. Tolkien was a signals officer, he didn't "charge" anywhere and all he carried for weaponry was a Webley Mk VI revolver.

You're certainly right here - if Tolkien 'saw' anything on the Somme, it was a fair city in ruins, dragons of steel and thunder, and brave heroes tumbling with craven cowards to the same inevitable end. I'm still hoping we get a glimpse of the Fall of Gondolin - but it's not much of a hope.

I'm kind of inclined to rendering the idea in art, so... do you happen to know what Tolkien would have had on him as equipment etc when going over the top? I assume he didn't carry phones, lamps, flags, and pigeons with him at all times, though I'm willing to be proved wrong...

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Tolkien wouldn't have worn very much in terms of gear: far less than a ranker. His khaki wool service uniform - with necktie(!) and a peaked cap: steel helmets wouldn't be authorized for officers for over a year. His revolver, on a lanyard around his neck. Possibly a whistle, although I doubt it as he wasn't a platoon leader. Pigeon cages and other gear would have been toted by ORs, but he might well have carried a Very (flare) gun himself. Probably an electric torch (flashlight).

Phones? Not hardly. Nobody was going to be laying phone lines across no-man's land (not that they'd last uncut out there anyway). And man-portable wireless sets, even Morse code, weren't yet a thing in 1916. Flares, semaphore flags, pigeons and runners: pretty much what Wellington had.

Although actually I don't believe Tolkien himself ever went over the top. John Garth or someone could correct me, but I believe his station was with battalion HQ in the forward trench line, and mostly concerned with receiving orders from Brigade via phone and wireless (which had to stay put). One of the major reasons both sides' offensives until 1918 might get into the enemy forward trench system but then peter out, was that once they went over the top higher echelons in their own trenches had no damn idea what was happening.

This is one reason why I keep emphasizing the extent to which the plot of the LR turns on people- especially Sauron - having to act on the basis of spotty, garbled and almost always stale information.

[Rhun charioteer]

I've actually been looking forward to this.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Writers who don't know their subject except on the surface, and are faking it:

In one particular scene in the new bio-pic Tolkien, the young J.R.R. Tolkien (Hoult) takes his friend Edith Bratt (Lily Collins) out to lunch at a fancy restaurant. Both poor, both orphans, the teens uncomfortably negotiate their upper-class surroundings, but then Tolkien finds his ease telling Edith about a particular English phrase that’s transfixed him lately: Since the phrase is beautiful, he reasons, it should mean something beautiful, beyond its banal definition. With her prodding, he starts creating a redefinition, conjuring a mystical forest inhabited by elves (take a guess for yourself what the phrase was, trivia masters! If you need a hint, try working backwards from the elvish city of “Caras Galadhon” and its ruler, “Celeborn”). The give-and-take of their blossoming romance is founded on language, and in such ways, Tolkien makes a case for why the mind of The Lord of the Rings author was as fascinating as his fantasy epics.

First off, as most will know, Celeborn and his city didn't exist in 1915 and wouldn't until the next world war was well under way. And while it is true that Tolkien , in On Fairy-Stories, singled out "cellar door" as singularly euphonious, it doesn't get one very close to Celeborn unless one mispronounces him Seleborn.

But beyond, that, it creates a notion of Tolkien's word/world creation process which is not only wrong, but explicitly rejected by the man himself (don't the writers own a copy of Letters?)

'When you invent a language,' he said, 'you more or less catch it out of thin air. You say boo-hoo and that means something.'

I have of course no precise memory of just what I said, but what is here written seems odd, since I think it unlikely that I should intentionally have said things contrary to my considered opinions. I do not think that an inventor catches noises out of the air... it comes of course out of his linguistic equipment and has innumerable threads of connexion with other similar-sounding 'words' ... No vocal noises mean anything in themselves.

In this case, of course, Celeborn was created from long-existing Noldorin stems to give a meaning of "Silver Tree,"* to go with his wife "Tree Maiden"* and their city "Tree Fort." Nothing remotely do do with basement entrances!

And, yes, the article confirms that Tolkien's trench-visions include Black Riders arising from German cavalrymen: nonsense both internally and externally, since not only did the Black Riders' conception lie two decades in the future, but there was no German cavalry on the Western Front by 1916; the Germans had converted their troopers to infantry once it became apparent horses had no place in trench warfare.

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*Later altered, but this was what T intended when he first wrote the Lorien chapter

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

But beyond, that, it creates a notion of Tolkien's word/world creation process which is not only wrong, but explicitly rejected by the man himself (don't the writers own a copy of Letters?)

Obviously no filmmakers do, or #210 to Forrest Ackerman should have let the previous LOTR "adapters" know how Tolkien did not like his work to be treated.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

And, yes, the article confirms that Tolkien's trench-visions include Black Riders arising from German cavalrymen: nonsense both internally and externally, since not only did the Black Riders' conception lie two decades in the future, but there was no German cavalry on the Western Front by 1916; the Germans had converted their troopers to infantry once it became apparent horses had no place in trench warfare.

Indeed. Cavalry had shown itself only marginally effective in the more open battles of 1914, and had no function in the later war of static lines and artillery barrage.