My 4th grade teacher read The Hobbit to the class in daily installments over several weeks. We were enthralled, most of us anyway. And then at the end the book said something about the adventures being continued in something called The Fellowship of the RIng! Our public library didn’t have FotR (I didn’t know there were actually three books) and our school library didn’t have it either. I kept this in the back of my mind, and finally found a paperback in a store, in the summer of 1966 when I turned 17. I’m not sure how I afforded them but I bought all three and devoured them over the course of several days. Those books meant a lot to me. My day of teaching in my senior English class that year was devoted to them. My first boyfriend bought me a hard-bound set that I still cherish even though he turned out to be an asshole.
And then many (many!) years later there was the FotR movie. I was thrilled and entranced, dazzled by how closely the visual reality matched my imagination, and by some of the special effects. The other two movies were less thrilling, and this is where I agree with Christopher Tolkien’s “action movie” description. Stuff was added for no reason but more action, the battle scenes went on way too long (they really didn’t have to for the story or the drama, only for the spectacle). I won’t speak of what they did to The Hobbit. That was a children’s book and should have been a good, scary, thrilling children’s movie. I’m told those things make money too, and a few people might have kept a bit more of their self-respect.
As for Christopher Tolkien, I honor the work he did, and at 93 he may not live to see the “Disney-fication” of his father’s work. At any rate, he won’t have to look at it if he doesn’t want to, and I hope to keep that same privilege for myself. The new TV show may be good or awful, I’ll wait to judge until I’ve looked at some of it. But rest assured bad stuff will be done before they’ve ground every ounce of joy out of Middle Earth.