The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy story by J. R. R. Tolkien, a sequel to his earlier work, The Hobbit. It was published in three volumes from 1954 to 1955. Two movie productions have been made, the more notable being director Peter Jackson's three film trilogy released from 2001 to 2003.
For more information on the fictional universe the story takes place in, including lists of characters and locations, see Middle-earth.
The story's titular character is Dark Lord Sauron of Mordor, the primary villain of the work, who created the Ruling Ring to control the nineteen Rings of power, and is thus the "Lord of the Rings." Sauron, in turn, was the servant of an earlier Dark Lord, Morgoth (Melkor), who is prominent in Tolkien's The Silmarillion, the history of Middle-earth.
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The Books
The Lord of the Rings began as a personal exploration by Tolkien of his interests in philology, religion particularly Roman Catholicism; fairy tales, and Norse and Celtic mythology. Tolkien detailed his creation to an astounding extent; he created a complete mythology for his realm of Middle-earth, including genealogies of characters, languages, runes, calendars and histories. Some of this supplementary material is detailed in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, and the mythological history was woven into a large, biblically-styled volume entitled The Silmarillion.
J. R. R. Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work" he wrote to his friend, the English Jesuit Father Robert Murray, "unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."(The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 142). There are many theological themes underlying the narrative, the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of weakness over self destructive evil, the activity of grace, Death and Immortality, Resurrection, Salvation, Repentance, Self-Sacrifice, Free Will, Humility, Justice, Fellowship, Authority and Healing. In it the great virtues of Mercy and Pity (shown by Bilbo and Frodo towards Gollum) win the day and the message from the Lord's Prayer "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" was very much on Tolkien's mind as Frodo struggled against the power of the One Ring (Letters, 181 and 191).
Tolkien did repeatedly insist that his works were not an allegory of any kind, and even though his thoughts on the matter are mentioned in the introduction of the book, there has been heavy speculation about the Ruling Ring being an allegory for the atom bomb. However, these comparisons do not withstand a careful look at the facts. Before atomic weapons were first detonated on August 6 and August 9, 1945, Tolkien had already completed most of the book, and planned the ending in entirety – an atom bomb had certainly never been the basis for the Ring. However there is a strong theme of despair in front of new mechanized warfare that Tolkien himself had experienced in the trenches of World War One. The development of a specially bred orc army, and the destruction of the environment to aid this have modern resonances.
The plot of The Lord of the Rings builds from his earlier book The Hobbit and more obliquely from the history in The Silmarillion, which contains events to which the characters of The Lord of the Rings look back upon in the book. The hobbits become embroiled in great events that threaten their entire world, as Sauron, the servant of evil, attempts to regain the lost One Ring which will restore him to full potency.
Writing
Tolkien did not originally intend to write a sequel to The Hobbit, and instead wrote several other children's tales, including Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham for publication. As his main work Tolkien began to outline the history of Arda, telling tales of the Silmarils, and many other stories of how many of our races and situations that we read about in The Lord of the Rings trilogy came to be. Tolkien died before he could complete and put together The Silmarillion, his son Christopher Tolkien edited his father's work, filled in gaps and published in 1977.
Tolkien had a deep desire to write a Mythology for England, especially after his horrific experiences during the First World War. He was also influenced by the effects of continued industrialization in England, where he saw much of the England he loved passing away and became aware of the immense evil in the world. Thus to understand his writings we must be aware of how Tolkien the scholar influences Tolkien the author. His writing of this mythology emerges as an Oxford philologist well acquainted with Northern European Medieval Literature including the great mythic works such as the Hervarar saga, the Völsunga saga, the influential Beowulf as well as other Old Norse, Old and Middle English Texts. He was also inspired by non-Germanic works such as the Finnish epic Kalevala. For a man who had created his first language by the age of seven, he was driven by a desire to write a mythology for England influenced by his exposure and expertise of these ancient traditions. The need for such a myth was often a topic of conversation in his meetings with The Inklings (fellow Oxford scholars, who have been described as Christian Romantics, who would meet weekly and discuss Icelandic myths and their own unpublished compositions). Tolkien agreed with one of the other members of the group, C.S. Lewis, that if there were no adequate myths for England then they would have to write their own. Tolkien's work has been commonly interpreted in this light.
Persuaded by his publishers, he started 'a new hobbit' in December 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring soon emerged, and the book mutated from being a sequel to the Hobbit, to being, in theme, more a sequel to the unpublished Silmarillion. The idea of the first chapter (A Long-Expected Party) arrived fully-formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, and the significance of the Ring did not arrive, along with the title The Lord of the Rings until spring 1938. Originally he was going to write another story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however he remembered the ring and the powers it had and decided to write about that instead. He started to write it with Bilbo as the main character but decided that the story was too serious to use the fun loving Hobbit so Tolkien looked to use a member of Bilbo's family. He thought about using Bilbo's son but this generated some difficult questions -- Where was his wife? How could Bilbo let his son go into that kind of danger? -- so he looked for an alternate character to carry the ring. In Greek legend, it was hero's nephew that gained the item of power, and so into existence came the Hobbit Frodo.
Writing was slow due to Tolkien's perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic duties. (In fact, the first sentence of The Hobbit was written on a blank page a student had left on an exam paper that Tolkien was grading - "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit"). He seems to have abandoned the book during most of 1943 and only re-started it in April 1944. This effort was written as a serial for Christopher Tolkien and C.S. Lewis - the former would be sent copies of chapters as they were written while he was serving in Africa in the Royal Air Force. He made another push in 1946, and showed a copy of the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not finish revising earlier parts of the work until 1949.
A dispute with his publishers, Allen & Unwin, led to the book being offered to Collins in 1950. He intended the Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the Rings, but A&U were unwilling to do this. After his contact at Collins, Milton Waldman, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself 'urgently needed cutting', he eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. They did not do so, and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff".
For publication, (due largely to post-war paper shortages, but also to keep the price of the first volume down) the book was divided into three volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring: Books I and II; The Two Towers: Books III and IV; and The Return of the King: Books V and VI, 6 appendices). Delays in producing appendices and maps led to these being published later than originally hoped - on the 29 July and 11 November 1954 and 20 October 1955 in the United Kingdom, slightly later in the United States. The Return of the King was especially delayed. He did not, however, much like the title The Return of the King, believing it gave away too much of the storyline. He had originally suggested The War of the Ring which was dismissed by his publishers.
The books were published under a 'profit-sharing' arrangement, where Tolkien would not receive an advance or royalties until the books had broken even, but after then take a large share of the profits.
An index to the entire 3-volume set at the end of third volume was promised in the first volume. However, this proved impractical to compile in a reasonable timescale. Later, in 1966, four indices which were not compiled by Tolkien were added to The Return of the King.
Because the three-volume binding was so widely distributed, the work is usually referred to as the Lord of the Rings "trilogy". Tolkien himself made use of the term "trilogy" for the work, though he did at other times consider this incorrect, as it was written and conceived as a single novel.
A 1999 (Millennium Edition) British (ISBN 0-262-10399-7) 7-volume box set followed the six-book division authored by Tolkien, but with the Appendices from the end of Book VI bound as a separate volume. The letters of Tolkien appear on the spines of the boxed set which includes a CD. The individual names for books in this series were decided posthumously, based on a combination of suggestions Tolkien had made during his lifetime, title of the volumes, and whole cloth - viz:
T Book I: The Ring Sets Out
O Book II: The Ring Goes South
L Book III: The Treason of Isengard
K Book IV: The Ring Goes East
I Book V: The War of the Ring
E Book VI: The End of the Third Age
N Appendices
The name of the complete work is often abbreviated to 'LotR', 'LOTR', or simply 'LR', and the three volumes as FR, FOTR, or FotR (The Fellowship of the Ring), TT or TTT (The Two Towers), and RK, ROTK, or RotK (The Return of the King).
Note that the three titles The Return of the Shadow, The Treason of Isengard and The War of the Ring were used by Christopher Tolkien in The History of The Lord of the Rings.
Some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Sarehole (then a Warwickshire village, now part of Birmingham) and in Birmingham itself
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The Peter Jackson films
Miramax Films developed a full-fledged live-action adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, with Peter Jackson as director. Eventually, with Miramax becoming increasingly uneasy with the sheer scope of the proposed project, Peter Jackson was given the opportunity to find another studio to take over. In 1998, New Line Cinema assumed production responsibility (while Miramax executives Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein retained on-screen credits as executive producers on the films).
The three live action films (supplemented with extensive computer-generated imagery, for example in the major battle scenes, using the "Massive" software) were filmed simultaneously. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released on December 19, 2001. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was released on December 18, 2002 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was released worldwide on December 17, 2003. All three films won the Hugo Award for Best (Long-form) Dramatic Presentation in their respective years.
Although some have criticized these films because they have altered the story somewhat and, arguably, have a substantially different tone from Tolkien's original vision, others have hailed them as remarkable achievements. Noted critic Roger Ebert wrote, "[Jackson] has taken an enchanting and unique work of literature and retold it in the terms of the modern action picture. ... To do what he has done in this film must have been awesomely difficult, and he deserves applause, but to remain true to Tolkien would have been more difficult, and braver".
Peter Jackson's film adaptation garnered seventeen Oscars (four for The Fellowship of the Ring, two for The Two Towers, and eleven for The Return of the King); these cover many of the awards categories (in fact, The Return of the King won all of the eleven awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture). The Return of the King's Oscar sweep is widely seen as a proxy award for the entire trilogy. The Return of the King's 11 Oscars at the 2004 Academy Awards tied it for most awards for one film with Titanic six years earlier and the 1959 version of Ben-Hur.
The visual-effects work has been groundbreaking, particularly the creation of the emotionally versatile digital character Gollum. The scale of the production alone — three films shot and edited back to back over a period of little more than three years — is unprecedented.
The films have also proven to be substantial box office successes. The premiere of The Return of the King took place in Wellington, New Zealand, on December 1, 2003 and was surrounded by fan celebrations and official promotions (the production of the films having contributed significantly to the New Zealand economy). It has made movie history as the largest Wednesday opening ever. The Return of the King was also the second movie in history (after Titanic) to earn over 1 billion $US (worldwide). Note, however, that these numbers are all unadjusted for inflation, making their significance questionable. Adjusted for inflation, as of 24 March 2005, the three films rank (in order of release) as the 71st, 56th, and 48th highest-grossing films in the United States.
Early efforts
There were plans for the Beatles to do a version of The Lord of the Rings but they came to nothing. It was even said that Stanley Kubrick had looked into the possibility of filming the story, but he abandoned the idea as too "immense" to be made into a movie. In the mid-1970s, renowned film director John Boorman collaborated with film rights holder and producer Saul Zaentz to do a live action picture, but the project proved too expensive to finance at that time.
In 1978, Rankin-Bass studios produced the first real film adaptation of any Lord of the Rings related material with an animated television version of The Hobbit, which was a precursor to the The Lord of the Rings.
Shortly after, Saul Zaentz picked up where Rankin-Bass left off by producing an animated adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring and part of The Two Towers in 1978. The Lord of the Rings, originally released by United Artists was directed by Ralph Bakshi and used an animation technique called rotoscoping in which footage of live actors was filmed and then traced over. This film was of uneven quality (perhaps a result of budget pressure or overruns, or difficulty grappling with the magnitude of the book). Additionally, the film ended somewhat abruptly after the battle of Helm's Deep, but before Sam, Frodo and Gollum traverse the Dead Marshes. Despite his best efforts, Bakshi was never able to do a Part II (covering the rest of the story), leaving the door open for Rankin-Bass to do the work for him with the 1980 animated television version of The Return of the King.
Since these films were targeted to a younger audience, adult enthusiasts have complained that much of the depth and darkness of the stories was discarded.
These efforts seemed to suggest that a satisfactory movie treatment of The Lord of the Rings was not practical. Moreover, since overall interest in the novel had waned somewhat, prospects for a visual treatment seemed poor. However, advances in filmmaking techniques, in particular the development of computer graphics, made a movie treatment more feasible.
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The Verse of the Rings
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
The lines :
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
are inscribed in the language of Sauron and Mordor (the Black Speech) on the One Ring itself. Phonetically it would be:
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
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