Sunday, April 19, 2020
Tolkien's Artworks: Final Thoughts
This past week we finished presenting the rest of the art reports. While the information presented was very interesting, I would have to say that the artworks themselves were my favorite part. I've always been fascinated by just how much work Tolkien put into his stories, the creation of entire cultures, languages, customs, relationships, etc. In fact, I've often wanted to learn the languages he created so that I can speak them, for one, but also because it would just be fun and cool. That being said, I failed to realize that his talents extended to artistic pieces as well. Through these art reports, I've been able to get a better grasp of all that Tolkien accomplished with regard to his life's work. Also, having never seen most of his artwork beforehand, it was interesting to compare his vision for his stories to that of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films created in the 2000s and 2010s. Anyway, I really enjoyed learning about his artworks and think that this is an activity that all courses should include if possible.
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I think the most interesting part about learning about Tolkien's artwork that he created for all of his stories is that we finally get to see the other side of something I believe we've all experienced with books turned into movies. So many times when I go see a movie for a book I loved, I sit and compare my own imaginings of the characters, locations, and objects to what the movie ended up being. (Huge examples of this: LOTR/The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson - some times things go So Right, and sometimes they are just Completely Wrong).
ReplyDeleteEven with books where the authors have input into the artwork for covers and chapters, what we are seeing is usually another person's interpretation of the author's world, which the author liked enough to use or didn't care about enough to request changes to. With Tolkien, even though he may not be the best at perspective or humanoid depictions, we can see the amount of care and consideration he put into his artwork both before and after writing about those people, places or scenarios.
This really makes me wonder how the movies might have differed if Tolkien could have been consulted for specific sections/designs. This is an option available in our time (Rick Riordan was still consulted for the movies about his books, but by his own admission wasn't given as much say over them as he would like, and we've all seen how that turned out). Granted, if Tolkien had been consulted and his opinions given enough power, we may have ended up with movie scenes as long, detailed, and drawn out as some of his book scenes (movies and books are two totally different mediums and trying to fit everything in would be great for book fans/fanatics but not so much for the general public!)