In 1969, Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, future founders of National Lampoon, published a satirical takedown of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, entitled Bored of the Rings. It holds up remarkably well today as a closely observed parody of Tolkien’s more windy stylistic tics. One critic, David Bratman, remarked, “Those parodists wrought better than they knew. I think it is highly significant how close Tolkien came to inadvertently writing the parody version of his own novel— and how completely, in the end, he managed to avoid it.”
Yet recent news that the “official” Lords of the Rings series is to have yet more film adaptations made of it should not only send any right-minded cineaste into a fit of despair, but make us wish that Beard and Kenney might return with another near-the-knuckle parody of what has become an increasingly unwieldy and sprawling Tolkien industry. Warner Brothers and New Line have announced that “for all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by JRR Tolkien remains largely unexplored.” …
This is deeply depressing news for anyone who cares about either cinema or literature.
[It’s been decades since I read Bored of the Rings, and I may have even read it before reading Tolkien’s source material. I’d love to give it another go, especially now that I know Kenney was one of the authors. I think the attempts to delve into the Silmarillion are interesting in concept but will lack the dramatic flair of LOTR and The Hobbit, and will also offer all sorts of opportunities to mess up the source material. The Bunny Sled of Doom is what made me give up on Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, and that wasn’t even a point of socio-political commentary, which we can expect to get in spades with these new productions. — Ed]
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