Is The Lord of the Rings still relevant?

[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.