Week 4 [30.11-06.12] John Tolkien Legendarium of Middle-earth

 

 John Tolkien Legendarium of Middle-earth

I am a fan of John Tolkien's novels and I think that everyone has seen at least one film from the Legendary of Middle-earth. In this article, I want to tell not only about the films from the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, but also about his other works that precede them.

I will make a short intro on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to make it clearer what the conversation will be about.

So, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is comprised of three live action fantasy epic films directed by Peter Jackson. The trilogy was among the highest-grossing films of all time, unadjusted for inflation. They are critically acclaimed, winning 17 Academy Awards in total, as well as wide praise for the cast and innovative practical and digital special effects.

Set in Middle-earth, the three films follow the young Hobbit Frodo Baggins as he and the Fellowship embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, to ensure the destruction of the Dark Lord Sauron.

The Hobbit film trilogy tells the story of a young Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (who is Frodo's uncle) who embarks on an adventure that will change his life and the fate of all of Middle-earth.

In these films, it is briefly mentioned several times that the events take place in the ‘Third Age’ and the last events of the plot just finish it. But how many people know how many ages there were in total and how long they lasted? who were the main characters of the films and how old were they? and most importantly, what preceded those events?                                     

All these questions can be answered by reading only one book The Silmarillion, this book is a kind of bible of the Tolkien Legendarium. But for those who are not Tolkien fandom, reading it will be quite difficult, for the Silmarillion is replete with complex names, titles,                                                             characters, and so on. 

At the beginning it is about how the world was created: “Eru ("The One"), also called Ilúvatar ("Father of All"), first created the Ainur, a group of eternal spirits or demiurges, called "the offspring of his thought. Melkor – whom Ilúvatar had given the "greatest power and knowledge" of all the Ainur ... Many Ainur accepted, taking physical form and becoming bound to that world. The greater Ainur became the Valar, while the lesser Ainur became the Maiar. The Valar attempted to prepare the world for the coming inhabitants (Elves and Men), while Melkor, who wanted Arda for himself, repeatedly destroyed their work; this went on for thousands of years and, through waves of destruction and creation, the world took shape.”

And so, looks familiar? like from the Bible? Eru is the God, the Valar are the archangels and the Maiar are the angels. Melkor - the main villain of the entire Legendarium, is the oldest of Valar –“ whom Ilúvatar had given the "greatest power and knowledge"” he is something like Lucifer and his brother Manwe who became the main among the Valar and led the army against Morgoth (as Melkor was later named).

 And so we see that the main villain is not Sauron at all, as shown in the films, and this is because - he is just Mayar, an ‘angel’ and initially only was a servant of Morgoth until he was expelled from the world at the end of the First Age. 

So now we know who Sauron really was, but who then were Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast? They were exactly the same "angels" as Sauron, only inferior to him in strength, but still they were Mayar. When I was child, I often confused the names Sauron and Saruman, and if you have ever thought about the similarity of their names, then here is the answer. Even before the countdown of time (yes, the world already existed long before the first age began) Sauron and Saruman were in the retinue of one Valar(archangel) and in some way were brothers by belonging. This explains the similarity of their names, that both of them had a penchant for engineering different structures and machines, both created their own race of orcs (only according to the film version) and of course both leaned to the dark side.

In fact that Gandalf and other wizards were much stronger, but when the Valar sent them to Middle-earth to help people in the battles against Sauron, they wanted them only to give guidance and advice to people, inspire courage and hope in their hearts and people themselves had to defeat Sauron, so the wizards looked old and had all the human needs. If it were not for this limitation in power, then I think that Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast might have defeated Sauron themselves.

 

I will not write about people, elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs and other inhabitants of Middle-earth, as they have been sufficiently described in films, especially in the director's versions (the duration of each film is from 3 to 4 hours). I will briefly tell you about the Ages. The First Age began with the appearance of people, but the elves appeared in the world for a long time ago, this is why for the beginning of the First Age there were many events, when the evil of Morgoth became, how elves and dwarves appeared and many other interesting things. But it was during the First Age that the peak of Morgoth's power and the greatest wars occurred when all people, dwarves, elves, Mayar(angels) and Valar (archangels) fought against the Morgoth and his warriors. When the war was won and Morgoth fell, the consequences were so huge that half of the existing world were destroyed. (This is why when the Valar sent the wizard to the Middle-earth to help in the fight against Sauron, they didn’t want them to help physically to avoid such destruction). This Age lasted up to a thousand years (it isn’t known exactly).

 After the fall of Morgoth, the Second Age began, which is about the rise of the Numenor (ancestors of Aragorn), the wars against Sauron and the fall of Numenor. It is about the events of this Age that Amazon is now making a series, which will tell who the Numenoreans are, why they were so great and then fell, about Sauron and the Rings of Power and how he fought with the elves for them, in the Second Age Elrond has one of the key roles, as the films say the Second Age ends with the victory of men and elves against Sauron in the battle of the last alliance. It lasted 3441 years. The Third Age was not as eventful as the others and the main ones began in 2941 of the Third Age when Bilbo Baggins began his journey and ends in 3021 when Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo depart from the Grey Havens. 

Sources:

I wrote this article from memory, I read main books(on my opinion) from the series of the Legendarium of Middle-earth(The Lord of the Rings 1,2,3; The Silmarillion; The Children of Húrin; Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth ), I spied the exact dates and counts and quotes from Wikipedia(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion), and the images are just from google photos(The Silmarillion, LOTR, Melkor, Sauron, Hobbit, Rings, The Ring, Balrog)

QUESTIONS:

    1. Have you watched all the Legendarium films and are you waiting for the Amazon series? 

    2. Are you a fan of Tolkien and what books have you read?

    3. For hardcore fans :) Do you know some interesting facts about the author, his books, the films, or even about filming or directing them?

For example, that Galadriel is Elrond's mother-in-law, or that Elrond is half-elf, his father was a human and his mother was an elves, he was born with his brother, ordinary people, but in childhood they were given the choice: to live on as people or become elves, Elrond chose an immortal lot, but his brother wanted to stay mortal and became the first king of Numenor and lived for almost a thousand years. So Aragon is a distant relative of Elrond, and Arwen in a some way his aunt ;)