1. It looks like it’ll be an interesting movie, though I still somewhat have low expectations for it. As far as the faith elements…they may include them, but not in a realistic way that shows how it might have actually influenced Tolkien’s life. It can be pretty hard to depict someone’s faith, especially for someone that’s outside that faith that might be a lot more worried about other story elements instead. No clue what the religious convictions of the writers and actors are, but a lot of atheists seem to water Christianity’s importance down to merely being a comfort during hard times and such.

    • I agree, Autumn. I think we’ll know how the movie makers view his faith by their treatment of Father Morgan. He was a father figure in Tolkien’s life and he clearly respected him, but if the movie depicts him as harsh and unrealistic by keeping the sixteen-year-old Tolkien from dating a women three years his senior, then it will be apparent they are not realistically showing the relationship. But you’re so right that showing how one’s faith influences a person is a hard job, even for believers. I have to also agree with you about expectations. Mine are low as well.

      Becky

  2. One issue that seems pretty obvious about the film is that the person playing Tolkien DOESN’T ACT OR TALK LIKE Tolkien whatsoever. Just look up any actual videos of Tolkien. Very specific personality and way of talking. Pretty disappointing for a “biographical” film, or a film based on his life. I think that shows just what kind of film it will be (it’s about the drama in his life, the events, not his personality). Which is fine. . . just not what I would have hoped for.

    Also, one big part of tension with his relationship with Edith Bratt was that he was catholic and she was not. She converted to marry him, and her parents were very against it. Will be interesting to see what they do with the story. . .

  3. notleia says:

    I think the important thing the movie would have to get across is how much of an effing NERD Tolkien was, but how do you do that in a visual medium when most of it was linguistic or academic jokes?

    • Hey, off topic, but I found something you might be interested in. I remembered a prehistoric animal story that I ran across a long time ago. The author made several storyboards, and this is the first of them:

      I found out that they also started working on a comic version of their story. So far it’s covered different parts of the plotline than the storyboard has:

      https://tapas.io/series/AllAreNotHunters

  4. Travis C says:

    I’m reminded of setting my expectations when I finally watched Shadowlands. I had a mental portrait of C.S. Lewis based on his writings and talks. Now I layer over it a visual portrait. Rather than focus on the film’s accuracy (i.e., was this film an accurate biography of his life?), I tried to take away a sense of feeling from incidents the movie portrayed that, generally, validated what I knew from reading Lewis’ works.

    No matter how well-intentioned the biographer, no matter how skilled, no matter how good the subject material is, I feel it’s a slippery slope trying to confidently attach causation with a person’s personal experiences. We’re too complex for some of the simple parallels that get drawn. Links, to be sure, but how tenuous?

    Then again, I’m usually a pessimist when it comes to these things, so I’m already going in with pretty low expectations!

What do you think?