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Lord Of The Rings & The USA
Some interesting facts here... read on...
Lord Of The Rings was written by J.R.R Tolkien (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in a dark-age version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide, but in the USA things were a little different...
- in the 1960\'s there were only 500 copys of LOTR in the whole of the USA, the first movie played theatres in December 2000, by February 2001 there were 12 MILLION copys available and they were selling like crazy!
- Americans argued how unsympathetic Peter Jackson was by calling the second movie \"The Two Towers\" after the 9/11 disaster when in fact he had simply kept to Tolkiens origional title.
- when the new editions of the books arrived in 2001 they came as the complete trilogy (The Fellowship, Two Towers, Return of the King)
many U.S customers argued how could this be when the two other movies hadnt even been made yet? in fact ALL the movies were complete by then and even more important the WHOLE trilogy was written by the 1950\'s!
- in 2002 Billy Boyd appeared on the Johnny Vaughan show on BBC3 and said how impressed he was with the way Dir Peter Jackson had filmed the \"Mount Doom\" scene where Gollum bites off Frodo\'s finger for the ring and ends up falling into the lava, at which point Johnny pointed out to Billy that he couldnt say that as it was a live show and there may be Americans watching! Mr Boyd (who plays the hobbit Pippin Took) said \"but its a well know fact\", Johhny interupted \"not in America!\"... later his interview was edited for the BBC1 version which was shown worldwide.
- Because of the movies being filmed mostly in New Zealand (some parts in the UK)
most Americans believe this is where the story takes place, when in fact the story is set in a fictional, alternative, dark-age Britain during the time of the Roman ocupation before King Arthur, hence the description MIDDLE-EARTH as it was known at the time. This is why all of the characters have regional British accents.
and they argue that Americans are not influenced by the silver screen!
Im not just having a go at Americans here! in fact it was much worse in Japan but my Japanese is crap!
Some interesting facts here... read on...
Lord Of The Rings was written by J.R.R Tolkien (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in a dark-age version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide, but in the USA things were a little different...
- in the 1960\'s there were only 500 copys of LOTR in the whole of the USA, the first movie played theatres in December 2000, by February 2001 there were 12 MILLION copys available and they were selling like crazy!
- Americans argued how unsympathetic Peter Jackson was by calling the second movie \"The Two Towers\" after the 9/11 disaster when in fact he had simply kept to Tolkiens origional title.
- when the new editions of the books arrived in 2001 they came as the complete trilogy (The Fellowship, Two Towers, Return of the King)
many U.S customers argued how could this be when the two other movies hadnt even been made yet? in fact ALL the movies were complete by then and even more important the WHOLE trilogy was written by the 1950\'s!
- in 2002 Billy Boyd appeared on the Johnny Vaughan show on BBC3 and said how impressed he was with the way Dir Peter Jackson had filmed the \"Mount Doom\" scene where Gollum bites off Frodo\'s finger for the ring and ends up falling into the lava, at which point Johnny pointed out to Billy that he couldnt say that as it was a live show and there may be Americans watching! Mr Boyd (who plays the hobbit Pippin Took) said \"but its a well know fact\", Johhny interupted \"not in America!\"... later his interview was edited for the BBC1 version which was shown worldwide.
- Because of the movies being filmed mostly in New Zealand (some parts in the UK)
most Americans believe this is where the story takes place, when in fact the story is set in a fictional, alternative, dark-age Britain during the time of the Roman ocupation before King Arthur, hence the description MIDDLE-EARTH as it was known at the time. This is why all of the characters have regional British accents.
and they argue that Americans are not influenced by the silver screen!
Im not just having a go at Americans here! in fact it was much worse in Japan but my Japanese is crap!