Well nuanced and thoughtful essay… I was challenged to consider how both “literal and spiritual interpretations” affect my thinking not only about the LOTR and RoP movies/series, but also my interactions with other media across many genres. This piece led to an interesting conversation between my hubster & I about how we can tend to do this with Biblical theology. How I learned to read and interpret the Bible in my teens has changed greatly now that I’m in my 70s! The literal Bible hasn’t budged, but my “spirituality” sure has, thank G-D!
I love that connection! God is always moving us to look inward, to the heart of things. That’s how he sees them! But it does mean a lot of perspective change on our part, even when the truth itself hasn’t shifted.
The line about Sam and potatoes is hilarious and true. I think I agree with you about literal and spiritual, though I’ve never thought of it that way before.
Thanks for this really thoughtful reflection on canon! Your points about the spiritual and literal interpretations are very helpful. This makes me think about fairy tales in general, how the same tale gets told and retold the world over, taking on different manifestations due to culture and context, but keeping something of the "heart" the same all along the way. There's something powerful, too, I think when we can put two versions of the "same" story side-by-side and examine what really sings to us from the telling.
Great job. Not everyone is a huge Tolkien nerd, so it had to at least make sense to people who have only watched the movies. As much as I’d love to see Beren and Luthien or Children of Hurin made into a series hardly anyone knows who they are.
That’s a good point! Maybe now there would be more of a market for those stories to be adapted to film.
I’ve enjoyed the discussion on this topic since watching the show, and I think people should spend less energy gatekeeping. You can be a real Tolkien fan and still appreciate an adaptation that isn’t perfect.
I appreciate you talking about violence in this, and have had the literal vs spiritual discussion regarding violence in both the LOTR films and ROP. I'm pretty sensitive to violence but while I can watch LOTR films no issue, I can't watch RoP; my partner has to watch first then tell me the time stamps of violence happening so I can skip over them. We talked about how although the books have battles and that implies violence, what we get in RoP feels to be way more than what is in the spirit of the text (we also recently read the spiritual biography of Tolkien so that's also impacting our opinion I'm sure!). It's a let down that in this aspect the showrunners have gone so far a field, at least IMO. I'll be sharing this article with my partner and I'm sure further debate will ensue 😆
Thank you for sharing! I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who felt this way about it. I too am very sensitive to violence/gore in media and even as a kid I never had a problem with LOTR. So it’s an interesting discussion to have of why similar themes in other films have a more traumatic impact on me. I had to grit my teeth through a lot of scenes in both seasons of ROP, and make sure to detox my brain from it before going to bed 😅
I feel like there’s just a general sense of morbidity in ROP that is very different from LOTR or Tolkien’s writing… as if some of it is more for shock value than good storytelling. That being said some of the fighting and intense scenes are really well done. The creators of ROP definitely know how to create emotional impact.
Well nuanced and thoughtful essay… I was challenged to consider how both “literal and spiritual interpretations” affect my thinking not only about the LOTR and RoP movies/series, but also my interactions with other media across many genres. This piece led to an interesting conversation between my hubster & I about how we can tend to do this with Biblical theology. How I learned to read and interpret the Bible in my teens has changed greatly now that I’m in my 70s! The literal Bible hasn’t budged, but my “spirituality” sure has, thank G-D!
I love that connection! God is always moving us to look inward, to the heart of things. That’s how he sees them! But it does mean a lot of perspective change on our part, even when the truth itself hasn’t shifted.
The line about Sam and potatoes is hilarious and true. I think I agree with you about literal and spiritual, though I’ve never thought of it that way before.
Thanks for this really thoughtful reflection on canon! Your points about the spiritual and literal interpretations are very helpful. This makes me think about fairy tales in general, how the same tale gets told and retold the world over, taking on different manifestations due to culture and context, but keeping something of the "heart" the same all along the way. There's something powerful, too, I think when we can put two versions of the "same" story side-by-side and examine what really sings to us from the telling.
Thank you! Yes, I agree—I was thinking a lot about fairy tales in the writing of this as well. I’ve always been a huge fan of retellings.
Great job. Not everyone is a huge Tolkien nerd, so it had to at least make sense to people who have only watched the movies. As much as I’d love to see Beren and Luthien or Children of Hurin made into a series hardly anyone knows who they are.
That’s a good point! Maybe now there would be more of a market for those stories to be adapted to film.
I’ve enjoyed the discussion on this topic since watching the show, and I think people should spend less energy gatekeeping. You can be a real Tolkien fan and still appreciate an adaptation that isn’t perfect.
I agree. So long as the core of the idea is there, books and video are different things and cannot be 100% loyal and still be good
I appreciate you talking about violence in this, and have had the literal vs spiritual discussion regarding violence in both the LOTR films and ROP. I'm pretty sensitive to violence but while I can watch LOTR films no issue, I can't watch RoP; my partner has to watch first then tell me the time stamps of violence happening so I can skip over them. We talked about how although the books have battles and that implies violence, what we get in RoP feels to be way more than what is in the spirit of the text (we also recently read the spiritual biography of Tolkien so that's also impacting our opinion I'm sure!). It's a let down that in this aspect the showrunners have gone so far a field, at least IMO. I'll be sharing this article with my partner and I'm sure further debate will ensue 😆
Thank you for sharing! I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who felt this way about it. I too am very sensitive to violence/gore in media and even as a kid I never had a problem with LOTR. So it’s an interesting discussion to have of why similar themes in other films have a more traumatic impact on me. I had to grit my teeth through a lot of scenes in both seasons of ROP, and make sure to detox my brain from it before going to bed 😅
I feel like there’s just a general sense of morbidity in ROP that is very different from LOTR or Tolkien’s writing… as if some of it is more for shock value than good storytelling. That being said some of the fighting and intense scenes are really well done. The creators of ROP definitely know how to create emotional impact.