basically, i am old. i lived for five years whilst Tolkien was still alive and i had my youthful Middle-earth obsession long before the days of the internet and the movies. don't get me wrong - i was awed by the first 3 movies, watched them endlessly, and was delighted how many unexpected people around me suddenly revealed their private passion for the books. all this got me back into books that i had not picked up for a decade.
but The Hobbit trilogy ended things for me. i have not watched even a trailor for the Amazon series. i watched the biopic and it was like The Hobbit movies - a director ignorant of the text! so this did start me wondering what the abomination of an adatpation of the original story of Bilbo Baggins meant for the 3 great LotR movies. then i read Christopher Tolkien back in 2012, and i was at first taken aback and found it hard to take seriously. but what he says was like a worm that wriggled into my brain, until now all i can say is that Christopher Tolkien was absolutely right!
@Eldy Dunami has got me with her take on the big money visual adaptations as just instances of fan-fiction. but they are not the same as fan-fiction in this respect: there are thousands of fan-fiction stories and only a handful of movie adaptations, and this is because the cost of writing a story and making a blockbuster are way different.
The next question is how good are these spectacular adaptations compared to fan-fiction? well, fan-fiction varies in quality but The Hobbit trilogy was simply terrible. And given the enormous cost of producing such a hollow spectacle, when more insight could be had from many fan-fiction engagements with the book, I conclude that we are discussing the GREAT FOLLY of our times.
'The Guide to Stairs' is more like fan-scholarship than anything else, but it claims to be a media adaptation in and of itself - primarily textual. It is not intended to rival works of fan-fiction, it is intended to point out what has been overlooked by those who have directed our dominant vision of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.
Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time… The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away. (Christopher Tolkien, Le Monde, 2012)
