The Bigger Picture: Lord of the Rings 3/3

The Fifth Age and Beyond
OK, so there actually isn’t a Fifth Age in Tolkien’s Legendarium. That’s because he stopped writing at the end of the Fourth. The Fifth Age is actually the Age that we’re living in now, although Tolkien did ponder a little as to whether we’re technically in the Sixth or Seventh, because the Ages have steadily been speeding up.

What’s this, you say? Middle-earth is actually our Earth? It is! But obviously only in mythological form, because we all know that our history is different (there was nothing in The Silmarillion about Elves fighting against dinosaurs, for instance, although possibly dragons and Balrogs might fit the bill if you really want to reach…).

Tolkien created a wealth of ancient legends that we can apply to our own past if we so wish, or choose to see as a pantheon of myths rather like the stories of the Greek Gods of Olympus. That hasn’t stopped scholars with nothing better to do and students with herb in the pipe from sitting down and working out a logical time-frame for events using our own calendar. Tolkien himself claimed that 6,000 years passed between the end of the Third Age and the 20th Century. In a 2004 issue of Mallorn, a journal published by the Tolkien Society, they posited that the Years of the Sun at the end of the First Age began on 25 March 10160 BC and that the Fourth Age actually began on 18 March 3102 BC.

Yeah, well, whatever. Whether you want to see Middle-earth as part of our past or not, enough history sprang from the mind of Professor Tolkien to flesh out thousands of years of world events. If that wasn’t enough, he also created languages, songs and artwork to accompany it. If you thought Peter Jackson did a good job bringing Middle-earth to life… Well, he learnt from the real Lord of the Rings.

Odds and Ends
The animated movie
Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated movie isn’t the greatest film you’ll ever see, but it’s hardly tripe either, even if it does end suddenly just after the battle of Helm’s Deep (a sequel was never made). The action was performed by actors who were rotoscoped into cartoon form, a process that took Bakshi two years to complete. The only notable cast member is John Hurt, who plays Aragorn.

The radio play
BBC Radio 4 broadcast this acclaimed 26-part series in 1981, back when Middle-earth was far too expensive to be filmed. Ian Holm (who later turned up as Bilbo in Peter Jackson’s opus) played Frodo Baggins to Michael Hordern’s Gandalf – surely the best incarnation of the wizard until Ian McKellen came along. The 13-hour series was reissued on CD in 2002.

The musical
Utterly spectacular on stage (particularly the giant Balrog, who had kiddies emptying their bladders in fear all over the theatre) the musical version of Rings was a whopping three hours long, made no sense unless you’d read the books and suffered from less-than-catchy tunes. However, as one of the most expensive stage productions ever made (the London show cost £12m to put together), it was still unforgettable.

The concert
Howard Shore’s Oscar-winning Rings score has been performed in concert halls across the world over the last few years, but his visit to the Royal Albert Hall last April was one of the best: the London Philharmonic played the music from Fellowship under a giant screen showing the movie. They’ll do the same for The Two Towers on 23-24 April 2010 and tickets are already selling fast…

The one book you should read
Printed as three separate volumes on first release, The Lord of the Rings is self-contained enough – despite the vast wealth of history that spanned before it – to read on its own. It’s long and complex, but it’s also a complete delight. You might want to skip Tom Bombadil’s poetry, though.

The one game you should play
Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
This massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) was launched in 2007 and rapidly became a hit among players. Angmar was followed by expansion pack Mines of Moria and it continues to impress, although we’re still miffed you can’t play a Wizard.

The one thing you should avoid
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
This action game from EA enables you to play the bad guys of Middle-earth. Sadly, the gameplay is limited in scope and, despite the fact it uses Howard Shore’s majestic score and Hugo Weaving’s vocals as Elrond, the game is essentially just a button-masher.

The mysterious Tom Bombadil
Purist fans of Tolkien’s trilogy were rather miffed when Jackson decided to delete the character of Tom Bombadil from The Fellowship of the Ring. Fans who weren’t purists, however, breathed a huge sigh of relief, because if ever there was a character who didn’t deserve to be immortalised on screen, it’s Mr B.

Our four Hobbit heroes run across this peculiar fellow at the start of their journey and stay with him and his wife, Goldberry, in their forest house before Bombadil rescues them from a nasty Barrow Wight. While it’s sad the Barrow Wight sequence was removed from the movies – it’s creepy as hell, though does nothing to advance the plot – nobody in their right mind would mourn the loss of Bombadil, who wanders around spouting nonsense poetry (‘Hey! Come derry do! Hop along, my hearties!’) and being generally enigmatic, but in a frightfully annoying and jolly way. He’s the only being in Middle-earth who is immune to the dark powers of the Ring, but as Gandalf later points out, he’d only lose it if they gave it to him because he wouldn’t deem it very important. Git.

Tolkien deliberately never explains who, or what, Bombadil is, leading people to theorise that he’s actually some kind of god. Whoever he is, he’s eminently slap-worthy. We reckon if he had made it onto film, Robin Williams would have been a shoo-in to play the part…

Words by Jayne Nelson © Total Film magazine #157, August 2009. All Rights Reserved.