Bored of the Rings

It’s very lonely to feel as if you occupy an intellectual atoll on which you are totally solitary.  That is to say, you arrive at a conclusion about a certain subject you’re sure, for whatever reason, no-one else would agree with, and you almost feel ashamed for doing so.

I have wrestled with this for some time, and for me it relates to The Lord of the Rings.

I think The Lord of the Rings is not the amazingly-fulfilled and wonderful, flawless piece of literature/cinematographically-intense mithras that it would seem everyone else does.

And for once, this isn’t just jumping on the bandwagon of being “anti” something that is popular. I try my best not to do that. I just fail to understand this book and the films are anything but the masterpieces everyone else keeps telling me. Or themselves, never can tell.

Anyway, I did try my hardest to read The Lord of the Rings, and I’m about to commit what I feel others will see as a cardinal sin and say that I couldn’t. I found The Fellowship of the Ring unreadable. And by extension, yes, I think Tolkien is a terrible writer. Never have I read so many pages of dense, impenetrable text in which nothing happens to characters I know nothing about and don’t desire to. It’s literally the only book I have fallen asleep reading because of the book itself being so boring.

Bear in mind I was 14 or 15 at the time; my age is a pretty irrelevant fact but it was around the time the films came out. I went to see the first film around that time with family. I recall pretty much nothing bar the stuff with Gandalf wrestling with a dragon for some reason; I actually fell asleep during the film and lost my already spurious grip on the plot. Same happened with the second film which I went to see as an organised school trip. More impenetrable waffling for what seemed like an age. Never bothered with the third.

“Epic” is seemingly used as a euphemism in terms of Lord of the Rings for “overlong”. And these films all were way, way too long, though of course this was before the trend of splitting the “finale” of a book series into two films. The Lord of the Rings is a film series I will never watch again, nor would I willingly inflict it upon even my worst enemy. To me it is full of wooden, one-dimensional fantasy-esque characters who essentially go off on a ponderous, convoluted bullshit quest around what is pretty much the most generic of generic fantasy worlds to dispose of a deceptively powerful “whatchamacallit” is one that could be easily and succinctly resolved without wasting 8 hours of my life by Frodo simply calling a cab. But I digress; I’m not reviewing The Lord of the Rings (god no), nor the books and definitely will not be spending a considerable sum subjecting myself to more of the same with The Hobbit.

I can’t be the only person in the world that finds these films dire? And these books unreadable; certainly not enjoyable. It’s actually my experience with The Lord of the Rings  that has put me off reading the actual novels of Game of Thrones, the TV adaptation of which I love. I don’t want to make a commitment like that and then realise I have wasted my time; in terms of GoT I am sure these fears are unfounded but they exist.

I am not really one who cares for fantasy to any great deal. I find it to be the actual antithesis of imaginativeness and quite dull and repetitive, certainly derivative these days. Fantasy series will always occur in what I would tem a Baldur’s Gate-eque pseudo-medieval world occupied with (quelle surprise) orcs, elves and halflings etc, and the author will perform Ass Pulls with seeming wanton abandon with the laziest plot device I can think of: magic. Click a finger and - poof! - instant resolution. How unsatisfying. Nothing grates me more than an unsatisfying ending. >:-(

What’s worse is that harbouring these views makes me feel almost mentally deficient, as if there is something wrong with me, and that as a somewhat intelligent guy who goes about writing his own stuff I really need to like something as “epic” as Lord of the Rings. It’s as if my disdain for LOTR should be something to be ashamed of, which is poppycock.

And those are my thoughts. Nice to get them out there. And I realise I have no doubt alienated (somehow) a load of people for daring to criticise, ahem, their precious.

Not that any of that schizophrenic crap made any sense either. Meh.