Guys, guys, we are talking about Middle Earth. Let’s not talk about those horrible quasi-hobbit-themed movies.
I’ve maintainted that those movies should have been forced to say, in the credits, “Based on a story idea by J.R.R. Tolkien.” 
The Rankin-Bass cartoon of The Hobbit is an hour and a half, and IMHO, much more enjoyable than the bloated indulgent slog that the three Hobbit movies are. I still haven’t seen the last one, the second one pissed me off so bad.
I wonder if LOTR would have been as popular as Star Wars if the LOTR movies were the first introduction to the universe?
For those of you who’ve managed to get through The Silmarillion, when does it get good? I’ve read LOTR, liked it, and I’m used to, say, Stephen King taking the first hundred pages to get going, but I haven’t been able to make any headway into the Silmarillion.
EDIT, LOL: I swear I didn’t read kenobi’s comment about The Desolation of Smaug before writing the above. Hilarious. Albeit it was a really bad movie. I think it was the raft ride through molten gold that exceeded my bullshit tolerance.
That cartoon was my introduction to Middle-Earth, when it originally aired on TV in 1977. I really enjoyed it (but, then, I was 12 ). I’ve watched it as an adult, and while it’s clearly targeted at kids, I think it holds up pretty well.
Only if the LotR films were supported by the level of merchandising that the Star Wars movies were. As noted upthread, it wasn’t just the films, it was the toys, and the books, and the comics, and the t-shirts, and the posters…
Certainly, the first sections of The Silmarillion (Ainulindalë and Valaquenta) aren’t an easy read, in large part because they’re Tolkien’s creation myth for Middle-Earth, and descriptions of the Valar and Maiar. Once you get past that, and into the stories about the First Age (the Quenta Silmarillion), I think it starts to read at least a bit more like a traditional novel, though even then, there’s a lot of “five pages about this guy, who then dies, and then ten pages about this other guy…”
It’s not until a good part of the way through that section that you get to some of what may be the most interesting stories in the book – Beren and Luthien, and Turin and Tuor.
At this point I think Harry Potter is probably inspiring more fantasy-themed works in television and movies than LOTR. Not that think Potter is better than LOTR it’s just had so much more commercial success compared to LOTR. In fact I’d go so far to say Harry Potter is more the fantasy counterpart to Star Wars.
In my opinion: Star Wars = Harry Potter and LOTR = Star Trek.
“Where there’s a whip [Whoosh-CRACK!], there’s a way!” Though I think that was only in the LOTR cartoon.
Thanks for the follow up. I’ll try your suggestions for another go at the book. A bunch of people here, whose opinions I respect, rave about the thing. I just could never figure out why they liked it. Maybe this’ll be the time I get it?
As to Star Wars, I was too young to remember the buzz about it in theaters, though I do remember the buzz for Empire. I remember reading and thinking about it, and realizing that the first movie is just plain fun. In a way that Fellowship wasn’t. I mean, IMHO, Fellowship is the best of the LOTR movies, and it is a fantastic movie, but it’s not as ‘fun’ as Star Wars, or say, Raiders of the Lost Ark were.
The hardest part of slogging through the Silmarillion is keep straight 10000 names that are all basically the same with minor variations. Especially the Elven names.
To the OP, I think what set Star Wars in the population’s mind was that it is not a space/sci fi movie. It is familiar story elements from Westerns and WW2 naval movies that people were already familiar with and loved. It just happened to be set in space which made it new. But the space setting did not prevent you from being able to see yourself as Luke or Leia or Han Solo and relate to the characters.
That and Darth Vader is a total badass in the first three movies. (less so after the prequel disasters)
What are some Harry Potter inspired works in TV and movies? I’m not a huge HP fan so I probably miss them, but I’m not aware of this trend.
Though Harry Potter is slightly starting to wane in public consciousness. Yes, you have the Fantastic Beasts movies and Harry Potter world, but it’s far less of a phenomenon and the last Fantastic Beasts movie was the lowest grossing HP film. Even at cons I see far less people cosplaying as Harry Potter folks. There are a ton of people who like to dress up as Jedi (or Stormtroopers) though.
One can argue that magic school sort of shows/books take inspiration from HP. “The Magicians” is directly influenced.
Take notes and keep the spelling straight when reading Tolkien. Got it. These tips are great.
As to bumper stickers, t-shirts and the like, am I the only one who’s seen a bit of “Not all who wander are lost” and “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?” bumper stickers? True, they blend into the ‘Praise The Goddess!’ “Coexist” and ‘air force needing a bake sale to buy a bomber’ messages (because the people who put Tolkien quotes on their cars generally have a LOT to say…), but I have seen quite a few of them. Living in California for a bunch of years probably helped. I haven’t seen Frodo Lives! in forever though.
I’ve seen the first but never the second.
J.K. Rowling claims her Harry Potter books were not inspired by Tolkien (although she does mention that she read Lord of the Rings as a teenager.) However I think it’s clear that quite a lot of material carries over.
Sauron + Voldemort (=Dark Lords), Gandalf + Dumbledor, Shelob + Aragog; Wormtongue + Wormtail; Nazgul + Dementors; Old Man Willow + Whomping Willow …
I think that because Tolkien reworked old tropes and it’s been so long since he did so, his works have become a part of the public subconscious. It’s really hard to disentangle what influenced what, because at some level Tolkien has influenced everything. And I think Star Wars is similar: reworked old tropes with pervasive influence.
I think some of the links are a bit of a stretch. The old wizard mentor that helps define Gandalf and Dumbledore comes from Merlin. Dark Lords have been in many stories over the years. A large spider in a book of a series that features a large serpent is not all that surprising (people tend to be unnaturally scared of snakes and spiders after all). A few other things are likely coincidental.
Though I do think that perhaps the look of the Dementors (not necessarily their function) may have been strongly influenced by Nazgul.
Oh. This one is easy. Fantasy and science fiction are beloved mainly by boys, men. (Yes, I know, I know, plenty of girls and women, too - I was one of them and wrote my own sci-fi stories, with illustrations, on my own time back in the 60’s.) … From early ages, they have all been entranced by the thought of putting on a space helmet and blasting off to the moon. Vroooom vroooom. We have liftoff! And fightin’ space monsters with ray guns, and blasting things, ‘pew pew pew’…Compare THAT big excitement to slogging through a forest with singing elves and semi-mystical companions who can’t even fly!.. and medieval type battle scenes like you have to read about in boring old textbooks in school. That is why Star Wars is so admired and goes on and on. Middle earth? Pbbbttt…might was well go camping for a weekend, meh!
Yeah, I think this was a mini-genre that was completely off my radar.
If you mean penetration, maybe it’s because Star Wars is 42 years old, and the LOTR movies are only 18? SW lived through a lot and merchandised itself the whole way, to little kids (who couldn’t even read yet!). How is LOTR going to catch up?
On the other hand, “Magic Boarding School” was already an established fantasy sub-genre before Harry Potter. A lot of similar stories exist primarily because of the existence of HP, but if those books never existed, there’d still be a good amount of “magic stuff happening in a school setting” stories out there.
Errol Flynn made a career out of medieval type battle scenes. The joy of grasping your mighty steel rod and thrusting it into someone’s body has an appeal just as visceral as anything in Star Wars.
The following was about Robert E. Howard, not Tolkien, but it still applies: