The subject matter of the Simarillion is that we are all flawed and those flaws lead to suffering and ultimately the repeated triumph of evil over good. And that every once in a while flawed beings shine with such a brilliance that it redeems all the rest of it.
Honest question... I recall attempting to read the Simarillion and finding that it was a simple recitation of facts about middle earth. I abandoned this after some 150 pages.
This was many years ago, is my recollection flawed?
I mean, you could view any story as a "recitation of facts" if you're really determined to take that point of view, but I don't think it's at all fair to dismiss the Silmarillion that way.
It's true that the first 50 pages or so are pretty much just worldbuilding, mainly focusing on the mythology behind the creation of the world (Arda) by Iluvatar and the various demigods. After that, you start getting into the details of what the elves did upon waking up as the first quasi-"mortal" inhabitants of Arda, and the subsequent eras of history. Some of it is painted in broad strokes, but there are plenty of chapters that zoom in on specific characters and their heroic and evil deeds, personal conflicts, betrayals, hubris and other tragic flaws, etc.
Sure, the style of the prose is a bit dry, but there's plenty of drama to be had in the story.
It's best to treat the Silmarillion as you would read the Bible. The styles are intentionally similar and both evolve throughout the works. There are narrative diversions throughout Tolkien's work, but it's ultimately a history of Middle Earth rather than a narrative story.
No, not flawed, it took me a few tries. The beginning has a lot of mythology that closely parallels the bible in broad strokes. Eru is God, the Valar are arch angels, Morgoth being Lucifer. Maiar as other angels like Gandalf and Sauron. With a few twists like Ungoliant that seem more like something out of India's pantheon.
Then you get into the elf family trees and their migrations. Its really dry. But it really helps understand the motivations of individuals in the rest of the book and the other books. There are some diagrams in the back to help you plow through it.
Then there are the accounts of both individuals and nations/races. They are more like greek tragedy than anything else. Though sometimes it doesn't even seem like there needs to be a flaw to bring down the fall. It is like binging all of Breaking Bad at once. Not going to leave you smiling, but that doesn't mean it isn't art.
I think it's great, but it's pretty dense and it's one of those things that you get more out of it by reading it several times. First read through it's just a barrage of names and places, and you don't know who's going to be important later. The second time through you at least know who the main characters are and what decisions are important.
Some parts are more like a traditional narrative: the story of Beren and Luthien, and Turin Turumbar.
If you didn't find it enjoyable to read before you might not change your mind at a second reading, but if it really was a long time ago it's possible your perspective may be different.
That’s poetic but it’s a poor way to characterize the First Age described by Tolkien in The Silmarillion, in which redemption comes literally in the form of a Deus Ex Machina.
It’s also not a great way to characterize the Second Age, since both a portion of the good and a vital portion of the evil sides in the conflict survive and both are very greatly diminished, but I don’t think the writings about the Second Age were really central to that work. That’s why the show (which I haven’t seen yet) seemed like perhaps not a terrible idea to me. There’s not much legacy there to tarnish.
Does The Silmarillion include a monopolistic antagonist that can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something to simply give away for free (or as a loss leader)?
Amazon is going full Sauron here. They're a multi-industry-spanning conglomerate that preferentially ranks its own show and discards negative reviews, while leaving House of the Dragon and competitors out in the cold.
They have whole other business units to recoup the costs. This doesn't even matter to them other than as a means to grow even bigger and capture/kill more industries. Talk about power.
Why are our legislators asleep at the wheel? We need to give smaller companies and startups a way to fight this. It's madness that Amazon can be bigger than Walmart, have its own shipping fleet, serve the whole Internet, run homes autonomously, own the e-reader/book market, own game streaming, and now apparently throw Hollywood around and make their productions look cheap.
> ..Tolkien's vision of the greatest evil in the universe was something he referred to as "The Machine", which was his way of talking about accelerated industrialism and mass surveillance.
> He wrote multiple books where the main villains were a dragon who sits on a huge pile of treasure that he never intends to use but incinerates anyone who comes near it; a man in a giant tower who's wrecking the environment with his factories; and an evil being who uses what's essentially a listening device to control the citizens of Middle Earth.
What exactly is the problem here? If Amazon keeps cavalierly losing money on endeavors they will drag everything else down.
They aren’t going to hide the fact that the show sucks and they certainly just made that much harder by doing this.
In order for them to actually maintain their power this show would need to somehow help them create a moat (it doesn’t) or just make money on its own by driving subscriptions.
As far as abuses of power go, this is absolutely not one of them.
People make these shows and I don’t think anyone wants to make a shitty show.
The issue is that this was a high dollar show and it likely had to have a lot of sign off. Unfortunately, great art and vast pre-approval don’t tend to go hand in hand.
I’m afraid we’re turning a corner in our golden age of television into a dark world of corporate overreach.
> Does The Silmarillion include a monopolistic antagonist that can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something to simply give away for free (or as a loss leader)?
That was included in one of the paperbacks published by Christopher Tolkien as “Unfinished Tales.”
I haven't noticed this trend, I know some streamers have moved but Twitch has been dominating the market for around a decade and YouTube is finally somewhat worth mentioning.
But this theme is pretty much in keeping with the darker subject matter of The Silmarillion.