Is The Lord of the Rings still relevant?

[GundamSentinel]

I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely asking - is there anyone here, who, after reading and re-reading LotR when he was 12/13/14 but has since read diverse fantasy, sci-fi, classics and contemporary literature ACTUALLY enjoy the books when they've tried reading them recently? Especially the stale characterisation on both sides?

Yes. I think I've read them a dozen times and I still enjoy them. Sure, they are old books; slow, ponderous and a lot of descriptions. But that's part of my enjoyment of it. I like quick and smart sci-fi and fantasy often enough, but it's good reading a big slow book once in a while. I've been reading Jules Verne recently and that's, if anything, even worse in that regard. And I loved it. I'll never argue that Tolkien is an amazing writer, but he knows how to build his world and make a story of importance and weight within it. That's a rare talent.

 

[Vladimir Stamenov]

I like slow books too, a lot of classics are slow (Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness, Great Expectations), but the last time I tried reading it, it was slow just because nothing happened for large stretches of the book and the language didn't do it enough for me to motivate me. What I realised was, in retrospect, the book's characters and so on didn't really entice me that much the first time around, it's just that for my tiny little brain, this was just the most complex story I'd read. But now that I knew the story and had alreday read it two times before, it just did nothing for me. Lord knows the plot is not simple, but compared to something like The Second Apocalypse, it's not much.
Eh, c'est la vie...

 

[Sean951]

I still regularly read Lord of the Rings. Yes, it is a ponderous tome and I skip most of the songs. And Bombadil. But I thoroughly love the world that Tolkien created and one of the coolest things I own is a first edition printing of The Silmarillien complete with a fold out map that I found for a few bucks at a used book store while on vacation.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I still regularly read Lord of the Rings. Yes, it is a ponderous tome and I skip most of the songs. And Bombadil. But I thoroughly love the world that Tolkien created and one of the coolest things I own is a first edition printing of The Silmarillien complete with a fold out map that I found for a few bucks at a used book store while on vacation.

You found...a first edition copy of the Silmarillion...in a used book store...while on vacation?

Wow. Dude. You shopped, you motherfucking SCORED!

 

[Sean951]

I still regularly read Lord of the Rings. Yes, it is a ponderous tome and I skip most of the songs. And Bombadil. But I thoroughly love the world that Tolkien created and one of the coolest things I own is a first edition printing of The Silmarillien complete with a fold out map that I found for a few bucks at a used book store while on vacation.

You found...a first edition copy of the Silmarillion...in a used book store...while on vacation?

Wow. Dude. You shopped, you motherfucking SCORED!

Yeah I did. I didn't even realize it for a year. I looked at it and realized what it was when I started to read it again and was quite happy with my discovery. I'm a pretty big LotR fan.

 

[KorfZin]

Go ahead and tell me what else from Tolkien is in the already mentioned Dragon Age and Warhammer besides "has elves".

And how would I know I would find "universal disagreement"?

In Dragon Age the Dwarves are cave Vikings who are renowned for their craftsmanship, practice ancestor worship, and generally fear open spaces (specifically the ocean with Tolkien and the surface in general with Dragon Age). The Elves were the "first race" who ruled the world with their powerful magic and impeccable engineering but now they favor dwelling in forests and are in decline because of humans.

The Tevinter Imperium is quite similar to the Númenóreans, they had powerful magic and lorded over "lesser races" of Men, they even both caused apocalyptic cataclysms by defying (the) God(s) and seeking to capture the sacred realm for themselves.

The Lord of the Rings and Dragon Age are both set in worlds similar to Medieval Europe in terms of politics and technology. Both also have a general theme of the world having declined from a more advanced and prosperous state.

I'm not as familiar with Warhammer but such similarities are there as well (in grimdark form of course).

I won't argue that these settings are lesser than Tolkien's just by borrowing many themes from the High Fantasy setting, but I won't deny that the borrowing happened either. The thing about The Lord of the Rings is that it is so deeply embedded in our cultural psyche that many elements of it are simply considered to be a part of fantasy.

And all of these things are surface elements. Most works draing from Tolkien take the races and their trappings, some imagery and the idea of a made up world but little else. I have made no claim that they borrow nothing.

Go ahead and tell me what else from Tolkien is in the already mentioned Dragon Age and Warhammer besides "has elves".

And how would I know I would find "universal disagreement"?

If you don't already understand that if there was no tolkien, there would be no DA or warhammer, then I am afraid I can't help you.

And if you think I said that, I'd like you to show me where I did.

 

[Rblade]

Snip.

Thank you, you're only about the seventh person to quote me saying the exact same thing. What's really funny is that you all apparently missed the fact that I find that very argument to be a bunch of hogwash. Clearly there's in-story reasons for why it wouldn't work, but also because if they did that there wouldn't be a story at all. The enjoyment comes from the journey, not from accomplishing the end goal.

Please, please, please try reading more comments to make sure that you're not going to be the 7th person in line pestering someone about something when in reality there's no need to be pestering them at all. I, and I'd imagine others, would greatly appreciate it.

sorry, it ticks me off. So I did stop reading there. thats my bad. Although I do think a person that says `that thing you like sucks because of reasons´ can get called out on his bullshit. Not that that was particularly the case here, I should keep my cool.

 

[Silvanus]

As to OT. As many have said before, Tolkien invented what is now standard fantasy setting. Stocky stubborn mountain dwelling dwarfs, dainty tree welling arrogant bow shooting elves.

He did not invent either of those things.

Again, I'm not doubting that the man's contribution was massive.

 

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

Well as it's the basis of much of modern fantasy, yes. The standard it set down is present in nearly every work of fantasy. Tolkien didn't create concepts such as dwarves and elves I'll grant you, but he combined them into a masterpiece. As for the Hobbit and what you may call milking, I found The Hobbit to be an excellent movie in it's own right, even if it isn't LOTR. I wouldn't even call it milking though as The Hobbit was the next logical step, and was heavily expected. Ok three movies for a short book is really pushing it but if it works it works.

 

[Grace_Omega]

The Lord of The Rings is "relevant" in the sense that the fantasy genre still seems largely unable to escape from its shadow.

Frankly I've never been able to get into the trilogy and I really wish people making fantasy would just get over both it and D&D and start doing more original things, because vast swathes of the genre feel incredibly derivative and stale now. A great many authors also mindlessly imitate stuff Tolkien did because they've become staples of the genre, such as making up fake languages for their setting (which Tolkien did okay with since he was an actual linguist but most other authors completely faceplant on), writing books as massive brick-sized trilogies or series regardless of whether the story actually requires it (because Tolkien did it you see) and filling books with scads of mostly-superfluous world building.

I think it's that last one that bothers me the most. Due to Tolkien it's seen as okay or even desirable for a fantast novel to waste tons and tons of page time on world building that bogs down the story. To be clear I don't think Tolkien did this at all well, but his many imitators were even worse.

 

[In Search of Username]

I dunno, has Shakespeare grown stale because it influenced basically all literature after it? I think the books are as entertaining as they've always been, I just wish other fantasy would be a bit more varied instead of copy-pasting the whole orcs and elves and dwarves thing endlessly.

 

[tzimize]

Exactly what the title says.

I used to watch LotR when I was a kid and I played many of the games, but I don't care about the universe anymore. Most of the once-groundbreaking ideas have become fantasy standards, so when I rewatch the old movies, I usually quit after about an hour; I haven't even bothered glancing at The Hobbit yet and have no intention of changing that.

Has the story grown stale after years of license-milking or has it simply being outdone by stuff like Warhammer and Dragon Age? What do you think?

?
The story in lotr has never been particularly relevant, or good for that matter.

The movies were cool, but the book is awful.

Warhammer is what it is...and dragon age (origins) is better than any lotr game I've ever seen on the market. Impossible to compare a game to a book/movie though. This is a weird thread.

 

[skywolfblue]

Yes, it's still relevant. It's a great work of fiction, for it's story, for it's characters and for the world that Tolkien built at a time when such depth was unheard of.

Even if something comes along that's "better" there's room in the human heart for more then just one fantasy story. I'd say Mistborn is a better fantasy story then Lord of the Rings, that doesn't keep me from loving LOTR a lot.

I find Dragon Age to be a little disappointing in the story department. DA1 was unremarkable. I liked some of DA2's story, Varric and the "story within a story", and the "day in the life of Hawke" storytelling patterns were neat. (But boy oh boy did DA2 have some other nasty problems) The universe lacks... flavor in my opinion.

I'd point to World of Warcraft instead as an example of a fantasy game with a huge amount of flavor in it's lore and universe, but that would only be everything up to Wrath of the Lich King, I'm not sure where they've taken the story since, most of the people I've talked to that still play say it's gone way downhill in the story/lore department.

I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely asking - is there anyone here, who, after reading and re-reading LotR when he was 12/13/14 but has since read diverse fantasy, sci-fi, classics and contemporary literature ACTUALLY enjoy the books when they've tried reading them recently? Especially the stale characterisation on both sides?

I did enjoy re-reading the books, I like the movies better personally, but the books still have some good elements that the movies overlooked (such as the fall of the shire). Though I do skip all the boring parts, the songs, tom bombadil, etc. I've read a lot of diverse Sci-Fi (there's a lot of Sci-Fi that puts LOTR to shame) and a few fantasy stories (as mentioned, Mistborn would be one I thought better then LOTR), but none of these have really kept me from enjoying LOTR. It's kinda like how liking a new "best film" doesn't prevent one from enjoying older films (say a movie that had a lot of plot-holes, but was still entertaining, because you liked the characters and the movie meant something to you when you were a kid).

 

[Timmaaaah]

Hell yes it's still relevant. It's not just about the quest and the world, it's about the characters.
It's about races coming together, corruption, and friendship. That shit is timeless.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's about races coming together

Yeah, I'm going to question this.

Sure, the elves and dwarfs end up working together...to fight the black people and the orcs, which "have the features of Asians most detestable to Caucasians" or somesuch.

And...though it's not stated that the elves and dwarfs are white...if they'd been played in the movies by black people, say, people would have seen that as being totally different to Tolkien's original work.

 

[Gluzzbung]

It's really nice that you watched the films, but, well, are you discrediting without reading the books? Really? I'm not going to lower myself to just insulting you for your clearly spiteful and underdeveloped idea but you should really go and look into a book called The Children of Hurin. It's not as deep as the Lord of the Rings was I don't think but it's still a really entertaining book and, if you read the Lord of the Rings, you'll be surprised at how different it is in style.

 

[Do4600]

Uh-huh...um. When you say old movies, you mean the ones that came out 12 years ago right? That's just plain not old in movie terms. And it was based on books that were written something like 70 years ago, which still isn't all that old in book terms.

I'm not exactly sure what you're basing this on, the books, the films or the video games. There HAVE been multiple versions of movies based on the books.

I'm not sure you get this, when you say that everybody else is taking ideas from the Lord of the Rings, you aren't wrong I'm just not sure you understand exactly how long this has been going on. For all intents and purposes, all fantasy produced since 1956 has been adapting ideas from The Lord of the Rings, all of it, everything you mentioned was originally derived from the books, Warhammer=Lord of the Rings, Dragon Age = Lord of the Rings, Dwarves, Elves and orcs didn't even exist in a unified form until 1956.

Before Tolkien, Dwarves were representative of iron age living, or spirits that caused nightmares and pox, Elves were essentially pixies that lived in trees jinxing people and Orcs were just slang in the 1600s for some manner of unkempt beasts.

So, Yes, it's relevant, because every modern fantasy is just a retelling of elements of The Lord of the Rings, all of it, not one bit of it wasn't influenced by Tolkien in some way. It IS fantasy, it's not just one universe in fantasy it's ALL universes in modern fantasy, it can't be escaped or ignored.