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Cheater's Guide to Lord of the Rings

Biggles of 266

1st Level Red Feather
Joined
Apr 26, 2001
Messages
1,126
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1. JRR Tolkien was born to British parents in South Africa in 1892.

2. JRR stands for John Ronald Reuel.

3. Tolkien fought at the Battle of the Somme in World War I and was discharged with trench fever in 1917.

4. The Tolkien Society says Tolkien's name is pronounced Tol-keen, with equal stress on both syllables.

5. A professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature at Oxford from 1925 to 1959, Tolkien wrote the first line of The Hobbit on a dull exam paper in the early 1930s. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

6. Tolkien's first royalty cheque for The Hobbit, 3,500 pounds , was more than he earned in a year at Oxford.

7. The Hobbit was first published in 1937, giving the world its first taste of Middle-earth.

8. "If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on," Tolkien said, "it's my wonder and delight in the Earth as it is, particularly the natural Earth."

9. The first paperback edition of The Hobbit in the US had an illustration of a lion and two emus on its cover as the illustrator had not read the book beforehand.

10. Tolkien insisted that neither The Hobbit nor its sequels were intended for children. "It's not even very good for children," he said of his first effort. "I wrote some of it in a style for children, but that's what they loathe."

11. Tolkien spent 12 years writing The Lord Of The Rings.

12. It is, after all, 500,000 words long. That's 1,200 pages.

13. Tolkien began his epic undertaking as an exercise in "linguistic aesthetics". "The invention of language [Elvish] is the foundation," he said. "The stories were made to provide a world for the language rather than the reverse."

14. First published from 1954 to 1955, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was dismissed by critic Edmund Wilson as a "children's book which has somehow gotten out of hand". In 1961, The Observer newspaper described it as "sheer escapist literature...dull, ill-written and whimsical".

15. The Lord Of The Rings has been read by more than 50 million people and translated into 25 languages.

16. It was named book of the century and book of the millennium in a number of international polls.

17. Police in the central Asian state of Kazakhstan continue to crack down on local Tolkien enthusiasts, nicknamed the Tolkienisti. Classified as a bohemian counter-cultural group, they are routinely imprisoned for up to three days without charge and frequently have their wizard costumes and rubber axes confiscated.

18. Director Peter Jackson's previous films include alien invasion shocker Bad Taste, perverse Muppet spoof Meet The Feebles and zombie bloodbath Braindead. With a budget of 190 million, ($A527 million) Jackson shot the Rings trilogy back-to-back over an 18-month period. As hobbits never wear shoes, Jackson worked barefoot throughout.

19. The preferred greeting of the Tolkien Society of America is, "May the hair on your toes never grow less".

20. Orlando "Legolas" Bloom said of his director: "He's cool as an elf, he's got the heart of a hobbit and he's mad as a wizard."

21. New Zealand was the perfect location for the Kiwi film-maker. "It has every geographical, geological formation and landscape," Elijah "Frodo" Wood said.

22. Cate "Galadriel" Blanchett adds: "The landscape is so young and so savage, so untamed and so unruly."

23. Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, changed its name to Middle-earth for the film's premiere.

24. Christopher Lee, who plays evil wizard Saruman, was the first actor cast for the trilogy. He is the only member of the production to have met Tolkien.

25. Christopher Lee reads The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings every year. His knowledge of the books proved invaluable during filming.

26. Neither Viggo "Aragorn" Mortensen or Sir Ian "Gandalf" McKellen had read the books before they were cast.

27. David Bowie was originally considered for Elf Lord Elrond, later played by The Matrix villain Hugo Weaving, while Daniel Day-Lewis passed up the chance to play Aragorn.

28. Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo Baggins, played Frodo Baggins in a 1970s radio production for the BBC.

29. Frodo falls down, on average, every 10 minutes in The Fellowship Of The Ring.

30. All but one of the nine fellowship actors commemorated the experience by getting themselves tattooed with the Elvish sign for nine. Only John Rhys-Davies Gimli declined, sending his stunt double in his place.

31. Peter Jackson later got in on the action by getting himself tattooed with the Elvish to make 10.

32. Cate Blanchett insists she made the Rings trilogy for the opportunity to wear pointy elf ears. When filming ended, Peter Jackson had them bronzed and now they're on Blanchett's mantelpiece.

33. Peter Jackson also gave Elijah Wood a gift one of the two true rings used during production. The other was auctioned off to an anonymous collector.

34. Inscribed in Elvish, the legend on the ring reads: "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

35. Enthusiastic swordsman Viggo Mortensen broke a tooth while filming a fight scene.

36. Orlando Bloom admits he's accident-prone and has an injury list to prove it. He has broken his back, his ribs, his nose, both his legs, his arm, his wrist, a finger and a toe, and has cracked his skull three times.

37. Miranda Otto, making her Rings debut as the feisty Eowen, Shieldmaiden of Rohan, in The Two Towers, is the daughter of veteran Australian actor Barry Otto.

38. A computer program named Massive generated vast numbers of elves, orcs and humans, bestowing each with the ability to think for themselves and react independently.

39. Every prop and costume seen in the trilogy was made by hand. Metalworkers hand-forged more than 10,000 buckles for the orcs alone.

40. After the September 11 tragedy, several people objected to the title The Two Towers. Peter Jackson refused to rename the movie.
 
Nice timing...

Very informative Biggles! The 2nd movie debuts here in 2 weeks, btw.... Q
 
Yes, that's a good list, Biggles! Thanks, though I'm still not interested in the "Lord of the Rings" stuff. 😀
 
Excellent and informative list. LOTR is one of my favorite book(s) and getting ready to re-read it again 🙂
 
I'm glad he refused to rename the movie; that would have been taking political correctness way too far! In th book/movie the two towers mentioned are not even in close proximity to each other. Barad Dur and Orthanc are hundreds of miles apart.
 
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