Unpopular Opinion
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I had a friend at school who loved the book. I tried a few times to get into it and thought it was dull as anything so just passed on it after 200 pages or so.
Fast forward to the films and I actually enjoyed a lot of the first film but the 2nd and 3rd films I found pretty endless. Then later at university people wanted to watch the extended DVDs or whatever and I found better things to be doing those nights after the first time.
Everyone has different reasons for liking or disliking things, but for me my main dislike is the lack of genuine humour in the stories. It is relentlessly serious. I don't mean I expect jokes everywhere but it's particularly po-faced, the book especially. I tried reading it again a few years ago to see if I'd been too harsh on it but still couldn't make it to the end.
So what you're saying is that you don't like one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time, the original that spawned the whole genre, because it's not a good comedy?
That's like complaining that your stove doesn't have an 8k display 🤦
I think it's more the fact that it doesn't have any sort of levity, it's full on all the time
That's what epic fantasy is supposed to mainly do.
Also, that's not even true. The characters of Pippin, Merry and Gimli, for example, are mostly comic relief throughout the movies and there's a lot in the books too.
Just because the genre isn't for you or the instances of levity fell flat for you doesn't mean you have to make shit up 🤦
Fair
No, I'm saying that it takes itself incredibly seriously which to me - this is my own personal opinion - comes over as a bit pretentious.
Tolkien was attempting to build his own equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon epic from scratch and I get that . I even admire it. But I empathize with his friend C S Lewis (perhaps apocryphal) response when show the first draft "for Christ sake John, not more fucking elves..."
Like I say, I don't expect Gandalf to be slipping on a banana peel while Frodo and Sam do a 'Who's on first?' routine.
But for me there's no change in pace, mood or objective to sustain my interest for the length of the whole work, which is probably why I generally more or less get on with the first book and enjoy the first film; but get less interested and eventually numbed to the rest of the story because it feels like endless servings of more of the same. To me it just comes over like, this happens, this happens, this happens then good triumphs like you knew it would.
Gollum is the only character that truly seems to go beyond a basic 'i am here to do this in the narrative ' and is mercurial and interesting to watch/read