Hello and thank you for downloading episode 424 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thorrogood, media producer at Speak Life, and today Nate Morganlock, Glenn Scrivener, and Paul Feesey are talking about the Rings of Power, the new Lord of the Rings series. So enjoy the conversation and I will catch you at the end.
SPEAKER_05Oh hello, welcome to the Speakeasy. My name is Paul Feasy, and I'm joined by I'm Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02I'm Nate Morganlock.
SPEAKER_05Hello. Same as always, same as always. And we have just watched the first two episodes of the new Amazon show, Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power.
SPEAKER_02New teleprogramme for us to dive into.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, supposedly the most expensive TV show ever made, did you say $52 million?
SPEAKER_03$58 million per episode.
SPEAKER_05Quite a bit. And you can you can see it on the screen. Which is only fractionally more than it costs to make one episode of the speakeasy. So this kind of set doesn't come cheap, you know.
SPEAKER_02Now we did try to make a re a reaction video in which we were responding in real time to the show, the two episodes that have been made available so far. But it wasn't particularly good reaction video. And I think the reason it wasn't particularly good reaction video is because it would be unbecoming to do a reaction in real time to something that is reliant on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Why is that? Because Tolkien, as Lewis, his great friend, believed that in order to properly criticize something or to appreciate something, you have to sort of submit yourself to that art form and you have to allow it to sort of work its enchantment upon you. And so to do a kind of quick reaction video type thing is to stand, as it were, in the um you know, in the fire exit of the theatre and to make sort of snide comments rather than embracing what's going on. Having only seen about three percent of the whole story as well. Yeah, exactly. I mean but it's episodic, so I think you can sort that I think that's allowed. Okay.
SPEAKER_03I think you can react to to So we've digested this episode for like an hour. So we're we're now allowed to hold forth? Can we? Yeah, I think so. All right.
SPEAKER_02It's just the talking during the episode, which is the problem that was yeah.
SPEAKER_05At least we didn't pause it though. That's the words. Maybe people pause things while they're watching it. Yeah. And then talk about it.
SPEAKER_02And there were no adverts. That was a good thing. Yeah, which of course often ruins television programs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So rings of power. Like, where's it where's it come from? So we we we have with us Nate Morganlock, who styles himself as a reformed mythologist. Amen. Amen. So to describe for people who don't know what a reformed myth is.
SPEAKER_02What is a reformed mythologist? So it's um it's a nonsense, really, but it means that I get to talk about stories from a Christian perspective. Okay. So reformed is just a ref reference to my theology, um, and uh mythologist isn't really a thing, but I take mythos, the Greek word mythos from which we get myth, I take that to refer to all types of stories. So whether it's folktale or fairy tale or or mythology or Marvel Cinematic Universe film or Disney Pixar movie or whatever it might be. Um now I sort of had respect for Tolkien earlier on and said no, we must not interrupt his show. Um, but he would probably draw a distinction between myth and fairy tale and folktale, so I'm being a bit naughty there, pushing them all into one and saying it's all about story and so really it's about um the reform mythologist thing is just a way into let's think about story and storytelling from a Christian perspective.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And Paul, you're a big fan of Lord of the Rings?
SPEAKER_05Well, to the extent, yeah, I mean, I've read The Lord of the Rings, read the book and the I read the appendices, I've not read The Silmarillion. Okay. Um but uh and I've seen I mean I've probably seen the films more than I've seen when I'm more than I read the books. Okay. So, you know, are you really a proper Lord of the Rings fan if you're really just more familiar with the films? Probably not from the world.
SPEAKER_02But you have you have just watched the first two episodes of the television programme, the most expensive television programme of all time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Whereas I I have not read The Lord of the Rings, which is like a horrible admission for a Christian to make. I've read The Hobbits, you know, but that's the kids. Yeah, I know, I know. Am I even am I even saved? But uh yeah, I I and I'm gonna blame a kind of a monkey mind that cannot I cannot hold 30 characters in my head at all. Okay, like ever. And I've never been able to do it for these these, you know, grand symphonic TV series like The Sopranos or The Wire or things like that. Yeah. I check out, I can't even read a menu because there's there's too many items on the menu. I'm just like, chicken, fine. Yeah. I I'm the same with my TV viewing. I'm just like, just give me, give me Seinfeld. Okay, there are four characters, I know who those four characters are, and and that's it. But are are we able to hold 30 characters and four contemporaneous plot lines in our minds at once? Because it seems like it's it's quite a it's quite a subsection of the human population that really gets into Tolkien and things like that. Are the others looking on from the outside? Because people like me are just not not not cognitively able to grasp it all.
SPEAKER_02I think there's there's well, there's two things. One is the how are you able to deal with that many characters presented to you in in literature, and then how are you able to cope with that presented to you on the screen? Yeah, and there are different rules about screen storytelling as there are about writing stories to be read by people. And the the nice thing about reading is that you do it at your own pace, whereas the challenge with television, of course, is that it's just like bombarding you with stuff, um, and it relies upon a kind of sequential time relative thing to be um to tell the story, and so one of the things we noticed about these first couple of episodes is that they are trying to introduce you to a whole world of characters in a very short space of time, and then have each of those characters have their own little kind of subplots that are going on, and with the trust that by the end of the season I want you to have wrapped all these things together neatly in a bow so that none of it feels like it was a waste of time. Yeah, that somehow every single scene contributed to the resolution at the end of the story, and the part of the difficulty is you're not getting a lot of resolution because you're staying in these kind of isolated storylines for the characters. So it's one of the challenges I found with um Stranger Things 4, which I think was the latest season of that, was just there are too many people to keep track of, right, and like the jeopardy is kind of ramping up all the time because you're you're with a different group of people battling a different type of demon dog or or whatever else it is, and you've got to kind of keep up with that, it's quite hard work. Whereas other forms of storytelling, and we've seen it done in television, will take give you just a single character and then you explore the world through their eyes, and that you go where they want to go. It's a much slower way of doing it because you have to work at the pace of the individual. Um, so The Mandalorian was a fantastic example of having I mean plotted quite a lot like a video game, really, because you just watch this guy go on these little quests, and each episode he's gonna do a new thing. Um, whereas this is very different from the outset. We are being told we need to to tell you what's in this world. There's a lot of exposition in that first uh episode. Um maps and everything, yes, um, maps and voiceovers and montages, and you know, all the kind of classic stuff you do in filmmaking to to get people up to speed with the story. Um, and a couple of nice expositional conversations with people. So, how long have you been here again? Yeah, yeah. 79 years, in fact, oh 79 years that these people who live here have been there and yet we are so it's quite a bit a little bit sort of clunky in that sense, but you've got you if you're wanting to to to paint the vivid picture of an entire world, right? Which you're doing because it's Tolkien's Middle Earth, yeah, that's kind of essential.
SPEAKER_03And why do you want to do that? You know, why why build a world it's not it's not planet Earth, it's Middle Earth. And it's not human there are humans, but there's also elves and dwarves and orcs and all kinds of other creatures. It's just make-believe. Isn't this tragic? Isn't this ultimately just uh a waste of time? Fairy tales? Why why why why has, for instance, the Lord of the Rings series been the most successful, certainly fiction, written in English in the 20th century? Why have people wanted to give themselves to this other world?
SPEAKER_05Well, I mean, I guess with anything, whether it's whether it's you know something fantastical like Lord of the Rings or even something that's a bit more, you know, grounded in kind of our world you know, we you know, you you might just sit think to yourself, oh I sit down and I watch something on the telly or I read a book because I like a good yarn. Escapism. Yeah, escapism. And obviously that is there is truth in that. But I think often stories speak to us on a deeper level as well, don't they? You know, so like you know, in in um you know, the Lord of the Rings, you could just say, Oh, there's a very superficial kind of watch through, like, oh it's just a little adventure about some people, you know, trying to walk in a lot going on a big walk in some nice scenery, you know, and there's some goodies and some baddies. Um but that would be quite a superficial reading, I guess, of it. And you know, the I think there are the the character relationships and the you know the you've got your Frodo and your Sam, and um you know that Frodo has to go through this thing and goes through sort of darkness and it kind of actually tears him down and he never fully recovers, and you know, there's a lot more going on there than just oh, you know, Goody goes and defeats Baddie. Right. And I think those things do speak to us, you know, whether we're ne always aware of those things, um, you know, the character who who does the right thing in the face of you know, great struggle and hardship, you know, that speaks to us about something um bigger than ourselves, I think. So but I know exactly what you mean though, because my my father-in-law is literally just like, well, that would never happen. And he won't watch anything basically. As long as if it's not football, it's not interested. That would never happen. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So well there's there's even a part of me in the there's there's a scene very early on where a young Galadriel is told by her brother, Do you know why stones sink and boats float? And I'm thinking, yes, buoyancy. Ballast. Yeah, yeah. If if a body is able to displace uh a greater body of water than the weight of the object, then the buoyancy will be. So you're a materialist. Yeah, basically. Aren't we all the G-But then the example of the what he says to his sister is it's because stones have their eyes downwards towards the abyss. Whereas boats have their eyes what boats have their eyes towards the light and towards above the above. Um and you're like, okay. I mean, that's a far more like Christian answer, do I say?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, an enchanted world. An enchanted world. But I think part of the you talk about why would you bother? Well, for a lot of this stuff, it's not worth bothering with, right? For so many stories that are out there which people are trying to tell, and oh, I'm trying to get you to read this, or I want you to sort of listen to my story that I've got, they they aren't. They don't stick, they don't sell, they they don't work, they don't get put on TV, and if they do, that not a lot of people want to watch them. Like it's really, really hard to make any kind of story world that anyone's gonna want to stay in. So the fact that Tolkien was able to do it with Lord of the Rings and not only create a world that is filled with opportunities for his fans to kind of dive into what he's written, but then apparently with this show, is there's enough kind of of a gap in the the annals of the kings of Numenor or whatever it is that you can make an entire five seasons, ten episodes a season kind of TV show? So that is a level of world building which has clearly worked, right? He knows what he's doing, and so the only question is not why would anybody enjoy a story about elves and dwarves and and and hobbits, but why would this story of Middle earth why would Middle Earth work? Yeah, because he's onto something, and without what he was able to do, you wouldn't have a whole bunch of other things in the world.
SPEAKER_03So what did Tolkien think he was doing? Because I mean he spent did he spend something like 17 years kind of building the world and inventing a language Elvish and and kind of um so he he clearly thinks it's worth worth his time. So there are two things that seem to sort of come up.
SPEAKER_02One is that he is he's he's well, he's a philologist, right? So he's a someone who studies people call phil. Um philology. No, so he studies language, that's his his expertise. And so he's interested in all sorts of languages that no one speaks anymore. He was like an expert in Anglo-Saxon and all this sort of stuff. Norse and old English, and so he's he's fully into the wonder of language and how it works. We're talking about language, and in a in in a way, what he does with um his obsession with language, in fact, I want to read something to you. This is a slightly weird thing for me to do because I've been reading through some of his essays and lectures and things, knowing that I was we were preparing for this programme. We told you we had a reform mythologist. And so I was reading this. This is really funny, right? This is a secret vice. So this is Tolkien giving uh a lecture to um a group of people in Oxford University, I think, in like the 30s, maybe something like that. Uh he says this he was sitting next to uh a friend of his. I promise this will land, but it might just take a while to get there. It's just really important. Like Lord of the Rings saying because of the philology, because of the obsession with language, right? So he was sitting in this tent, he was what in the army, he's sitting in this kind of tent, and there's this uh army officer who's going on about something, and he's not really listening. Anyway, um, the man next to me, so a fellow soldier, said suddenly in a dreamy voice Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix. And then this is what Tolkien says a memorable remark. Of course, by repeating it, I have let the cat so carefully hidden out of its bag, or at least revealed the whiskers, but we won't bother with that for a moment. Just consider the splendour of the words. I shall express the accusative case. Magnificent. Not it is expressed, nor even the more shambling, it is sometimes expressed, nor the grim you must learn how it is expressed. So he is listening to someone who is coming up with his own language. Yeah. Right? Yeah. He's developing his own language in the voice. His language, he wants to make a distinction between the accusative case and whatever other cases there would be, ablative or whatever, right? So he says a prefix would be an excellent way of expressing this particular case in my own language. Yeah. And Tolkien's just like, that is magnificent, what an amazing thing to say. That's the most wonderful thing you could possibly do. Whereas of course, most people are going to go, that sounds tedious and ridiculous, right? Yeah. But and then there's another one where um he says, I knew two people who constructed a language called Animalic almost entirely out of English animal, bird, and fish names. And they conversed in it fluently to the dismay of bystanders. I was never fully instructed in it, nor a proper animalic speaker, but I remember out of the rag bag of memory that dog nightingale woodpecker 40 meant you are an ass. So that's what he calls it his secret vice. Tolkien is obsessed with language, he's absolutely obsessed with language, and and the idea that you could create your own language for him is absolutely wonderful. Now, put that together with his interest in Englishness and the history of England, and he's a medievalist at some level, and his desire for there to be a proper mythology of England. Yeah. And you have the Lord of the Rings. You build a world with a language, and that world is giving you the mythology of the English. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Because the Norse myths were much more involved. In English, in old English, you have Beowulf, which he was a great expert in. But apart from that, he's saying we don't really have a kind of a an origin story for England. And and and like Lord of the Rings is it?
SPEAKER_02Is this well in a way it's it sort of is. And so when you take, you know, in a hobbit, uh in a hole on the ground there lived a hobbit, and you start with the shire, and a you know, a very kind of cozy knit group of people who would like to sit and smoke a pipe and and drink some beer and you know, maybe in the summer have you know a little party with some more food, and who get obsessed about like spoons and things, which is like a uh there's a family of hobbits who do that in the in the hobbit, I think, who are concerned about their spoons and getting their inheritance. Yeah, yeah. Um it's pretty English. So it's there it's this kind of small uh parochial bucolic kind of world of of pleasantness and yet with with with some dark clouds around because there's a northernness to kind of the British Isles and and being English as well. So you put that in and the and the sense of imposition that then comes with a bunch of dwarfs turning up and a wizard and telling you you've got to go and uh on a mission to meet a dragon. And and all of that then offers, you know, as a children's book version are to sort of um precede the world building that increases in Lord of the Rings. It is kind of saying, Here are the challenges of that, and but it is it's fundamentally linguistically based, it's based in language, and which is why it has so much fun creating all these other peoples and and groups and their own languages and poems every two pages or what.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And and is there something to the the time period in which Tolkien is writing? Um like two two big themes, I'm thinking. One is industrialization and the the sort of the shyeness of Britain going through the 19th century and that sort of process of the skies being choked and um and being ground down in the factories and that kind of thing. And then the other massive thing being World War One, which he fought in, he was at the Somme, he you know, miraculously in some ways, you know, came back from the Somme and and sort of returned to the Shire. Is that is there a sense of of him being from that sort of small little Middle England and and and going and facing off against the beast and coming back to the Shire? But it's different now.
SPEAKER_05Well, people do talk about that. I don't know, some people I don't know if it's people say it's overplayed, but that sense that when they return. Well, it's different in the films than in the books, isn't it? Because in the books they return to the Shire destroyed, like the scourging of the Shire at the end of Lord of the Rings, whereas in the film version they go back and But there is a scene, isn't there, with four of them round the in the bar where they look round at everyone and kind of and there's that sense in which they've all gone through something that no one else will understand, and they are inevit they are forever changed by it. And particularly we see that in Frodo, you know, Frodo himself isn't will never heal from what he's gone through, which people say is kind of pointing in some extent to like the soldiers who go to war and come back and life is forever changed.
SPEAKER_02But but again, that's well, that's one of the reasons why um Lord of the Rings succeeds is because it isn't allegorical in the sense that it's not saying, Well, this is Russia and this is the atomic bomb and this is everything else. In fact, Lewis talks about that. I'll read his his review of Lord of the Rings uh in a minute, because it's fascinating. But um the the key thing and what l what Tolkien is after with with Lord of the Rings is not that it be political, but that it'd be mythical. It it it'd be it'd be much less kind of how do I Apply this to the current political climate, you know. It's not directed by Adam McKay. You know, it's it's not don't look up. And and that is one of the major challenges of making the Rings of Power TV show, is that we are now all convinced that television and storytelling and filmmaking and books and whatever else there is, they only have a cultural value in a cultural war, yeah. Which is happening right now. So there's nothing mythic, there's nothing that's that's that's properly human, there's definitely nothing religious, there's definitely nothing um philosophical. It is just about political winning a culture war and and making television to provide or films to provide ammunition on social media platforms, right? It's it's as though and and that um and that I think was what would why Tolkien would would really struggle with the fact that they're making this a television programme is because you're sort of cheapening the the the kind of the grand narratives, the meta narrative title sort of.
SPEAKER_05So you think that they are playing into a just like a cultural a cultural war rather than like here's a big mythology myth, you know.
SPEAKER_02I I think it's become I mean having just only watched two episodes, granted, you know, there's a long way to kind of go and all that sort of stuff, but it's it doesn't feel it sort of feels like it's set in Tolkien's world, but it's it the language has been so updated and so is so loaded with kind of cultural significance that it just feels on the nose, it feels a bit kind of alright, okay. Um was this strictly necessary?
SPEAKER_05So give us some examples in.
SPEAKER_02I suppose part of the kind of expositional stuff that was in the first episode just felt there's a conversation that takes place between is it Nori Brandy Buck, I think there might be a name, Foot, who is one of the half footfoot. She has a sort of conversation with her mother in which her mother kind of sort of lists out um you know all the different uh races and peoples of Middle Earth and says how they are sort of for themselves and and we should all kind of know our place. And you have this young girl that sort of I don't believe anything that sort of stuff, you know, and and she you're clearly she's being set up to be someone who's going to break all the categories that we've got and this sort of thing, which uh is a it is fundamentally political. It's it's a it's a here are some categories of things that are out there, and that I am sort of an activist for breaking down sort of dividing walls. Now you don't need to do that in Lord of the Rings. People will naturally bump up against each other and out of a sort of frustrating necessity have to kind of deal with each other and all the difficulties that they have with it. You don't sort of have this sense certainly for characters in their infancy, if you like, who are thinking about crossing all the cultural barriers that it's possible to cross, and why can't we all sort of embrace one another and in a big kind of uh group hug? So that that's one of the things that great storytelling on riv reveals that to the characters. It doesn't start off with a character who's on a mission to go and change the world. It's like okay, yeah. Like Bilbo, to go back to the Hobbit, was not trying to leave the Shire. He did not want to leave the Shire, right? And the fact that he had to was very difficult for him to deal with, right? And that is a sense of of kind of uh great mythic story, the re the refusal of the call.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so in like the Lord of the Rings, so with Gimli and Legolus, they are very much kind of you know, elves and dwarfs don't mix, you know, but of course they're thrown together, yeah, and they become friends through it, and there is this kind of development. It's not kind of they're not idealistic, kind of progressive, I mean progressive dwarf, yeah, progressive elf before it starts.
SPEAKER_02They they there's it's this that sort of acknowledgement that we are slightly strange, you know, co-belligerents, and we're actually fighting, you know, they do it in Lord of the Rings films, it's like this this kind of battle for who can kill the most, you know. And but there's a kind of remarkable deep respect that comes. Um but that's that's one of the things you draw out through the story. Characters who are not um acting as proxy for the author's political or cultural viewpoints, having to sort of it constantly express that, let the story reveal that to both reader and and to the to the protagonist.
SPEAKER_03You said about Tolkien not perhaps uh being delighted that Amazon Prime was going to take this up. Certainly Tolkien's fans um have responded pr pretty negatively overall, in terms of how these first two episodes or even just the the proposition that someone was going to build on Tolkien's world. Um that's that that is really making you rod for your own back, isn't it? Trying to trying to enter into the world of the fan and keep everybody happy.
SPEAKER_02Well, and that's the thing, it's it's franchise storytelling. Yeah, you have a fandom, which is why you're going to tell this story, because there's already a group of people who are gonna buy tickets to it or pay the subscriptions. Yeah, it's a calculated financial decision to tell this story. That's not what Tolkien was doing. Yeah, it's not what you know. If you're going into this to make money, you're not going in it to tell a great story, and then you're into the battle of who knows best, the customer, and you know, how do you balance that out with everything else? So you don't want fan service, you don't want just to give people exactly what they want because they own the characters, but you at the same time, you don't also just want to be undermining a bit of uh storytelling and world pilling. I mean, I I I didn't actually think it was it was so terrible because I think we'd already sold the farm when we had the Peter Jackson films. I still haven't watched the Hobbit films because I'm just like, yeah what are you doing? I do not need three films to tell me the story.
SPEAKER_03Of which you can read in uh half the time. Yeah. So um yeah. What about you? As a as a as a fan, Paul, what were you expecting going into watching the first two episodes and and what did you find?
SPEAKER_05Uh I didn't know what to expect to be honest. Like I said, I've not read any of the Silmarillion or that kind of stuff, so I don't really know anything about the the narrative story of it. Um I mean, I guess I mean I like shows or f franchises, whatever you want to call it, that have a lore and a history. You know, so you know, if I'm watching something, I like those episodes of a story where you're like, oh, this is this is taking us further down the road of the lore and the history rather than you know, sometimes you get those episodes which are just filler material, you know.
SPEAKER_02Christmas special episodes. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So, you know, like I think I don't know, you know, I I at the beginning you've got that the opening scenes are all about sort of um Morgoth and this kind of dark power that there was and you know that stuff. Like for me, I like that side of it. Um I mean in a sense I you know, there's what maybe like four or five different strands going on in the story, aren't there? No, I don't know where any of them are going. Like you go into it, you know. I suppose you go in thinking, or I go in thinking, presumably these are gonna tie together in some way. Um you know, I mean I quite enjoyed it. Yeah. You know, I enjoyed it. I enjoy I enjoyed, you know, I thought it was a good watch. Um, you know, obviously it looks phenomenal in terms of what they've done, it should do for fifty-eight million dollars an episode, yeah. You know, at that stage if it doesn't look good, um you know, but I mean I think it it's trying to deal with I like the fact it's trying to deal with uh uh this big thing. Uh you know, Sauron is the big bad in Lord of the Rings, isn't he? Although you never really see him. Um and so to get the kind of the history of that, the formation you get that even in the Hobbit though, that happen there's bits of that in the Hobbit, isn't there, that they dip into. Um you know, so uh you know I'm I'm intrigued to kind of see where it goes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um apart from a few Basil exposition moments, Nate. Overall, it was a good watch, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I I don't know if I'll watch any more of it because I'm like, okay, just there's it's just every episode's now along. And and that's that's partly because you know there are there are things I think are great TV, right? So I found I personally found Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul to be outstanding as television, which show not tell, and it's kind of it's show a vision, maybe not television. Um so there's something to be said for television from the Greek using um using television as television and yeah that there's something you know Tolkien didn't make a TV program, Tolkien wrote wrote uh you know a grand nov n fantasy novel. And was it would it have survived if he'd initially started off with making a TV program? Right? Because TV programmes aren't novels, so like and you up you need to update television and film all the time when the technology starts to look really weak and pathetic, and you people sort of go, Oh wow, that's kind of cringy and dated. You don't tend to do that with books in the same way, they they tend to last. You might possibly you know update some of the language if it's if it's hundreds of years later, but of course, television and films are much younger medium. Um but yeah, I I just think it's yeah, it was yeah, it's fine, fine, you know. Um I'm not angered. Well, that's more so we we were worried, weren't we? It's not astonished. You don't want to see Nate angry. I as I said earlier when we were watching it, and we probably got the clip that we can show. I was very happy with the the way in which an animal was shown on the screen at one particular point. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It was a wonderful point. The cow reveal. Yeah, one of the best you've ever seen. Yeah, probably the best. Probably that's a revealed cow.
SPEAKER_05You thought uh interestingly, relatively early on, you said something like about how fast it was moving, how quick it all was. Yeah, and then I mean actually I was sitting there thinking some of this feels quite slow to me. Okay, because it seemed to be like here's another scene of two elves having a talk. Yeah, you know. Yeah, and for me and and I could see why someone would watch it. Stop too much information. I could see why someone would watch it and say because because you know, I generally stuff does move quickly these days because it doesn't seem people have any attention span for it. But you know, if you've got a series that you can draw out, then why not slow it down, you know, and you know, because it generally the first episode, I got to the end of the first episode and I thought, okay, it's obviously tried to set up lots all at once. And maybe maybe they didn't need to introduce all four bits at once. They could have introduced a couple of bits and then you know there'll be a few more that begin to creep in. Um but like it it didn't feel to me, you know. I think I felt at the end of the episode, oh it's I don't know where it's going yet. You know, I don't know where this I don't I there's no sort of none of those stories had a obviously there's not gonna be a resolution, but even at the end of an individual episode, you expect there normally to be something that makes you keep going. So the the weakness of that first episode I felt was that it feels like classic first episode thing where you know people might watch it and go, Oh well, I don't know what's going on. And I go, You're not supposed to know what's going on at this point. You could that's okay, you know.
SPEAKER_03Hang on there.
SPEAKER_05And and I there's another I you know, I think I can't well we've watched two episodes, can't we? So I can't remember which one which was in what now. But I think okay, you've got these different storylines, you've kind of got the Elron storyline, which is about the forging of the rings, you know, and you're like, okay, well that's that's interesting to me. I want to see where that goes. You've got the storyline with Galadriel who's looking for Sauron. Okay, that ties in with the big story, that's okay, I'm good with that. Uh we've got the meteor man. Who's the meteor man? Who is the meteor man that's fallen from the sky with the kind of little hobbits? Yeah. I'm like, okay, that's a bit mysterious. And then there's the other one, what was it?
SPEAKER_03The wrong one with the cow, you know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that one's a bit more left of field. Yeah. But you're kind of like, okay, there's something going on there with the whatever's going on under the ground. Yeah. You know. So there's enough in there for me to be like, okay, I want to see where each of those goes. And I'm working on the basis that they will come through together at some point. Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01Let's get back to the podcast.
SPEAKER_03And I I think we still, even though we've got these these contemporaneous strands, we probably do have the sense that Galadriel is it's her story. Yeah. I mean, probably because she's she is his story. She is her story. And she is the narrator at the start, which is a little bit of a throwback to Kate Blanchette in uh Lord of the Rings. Um it begins with her in this edenic paradise sort of thing, and there's a kind of a fall, and and then you get this sense of she is offered heaven, and instead she chooses the struggle on earth, she chooses to you know cast herself into the deep abyss in order to eradicate evil, or is it just for vengeance? And and as soon as she did that, I said hero, right?
SPEAKER_02And then you said uh I can't remember exactly what I said, but not a very Tolkieny hero. Yes, not a very tall. So it is we talked a little bit about this when we were talking about the little girl who wants to you know get rid of all the you know distinctions and everyone can live sort of happily in some sort of uh one city in which uh all the different types of of inhabitants of Middle Earth can gather together. Um the I would never happen. So um yes, the the challenge for it being a Tolkien hero is that the heroes Tolkien has written into Middle Earth are Christian heroes, by which I mean they are sha types of of Christ. So this was uh possibly the worst idea for an evangelistic outreach event ever. Okay. Was that I was working uh for the All Souls Clubhouse and uh All Souls Langham Place in London decided they wanted to do a showing of the director's cut of the Lord of the Rings films, the extended versions. They were gonna show all three films on one Saturday afternoon evening. Yep. And in between these films, I was going to get up and give a short evangelistic. It was like Is this this could be the worst thing ever. In one sense, it was really good for me because it meant that I went into those books and I went into the films and was really kind of thinking through okay, so Tolkien is a Christian, he's avowedly Catholic, and he's very, you know, um, he's evangelistically so, right? That's why Lewis became a Christian, and so the he's clearly hasn't written a Christian allegory, and he clearly hasn't written a clear Christ type in the sense that Aslan performs a Christ type in in Narnia. But what he has done is that he's given you in the figures of Frodo and Aragorn slash or Strahdus slash Aragorn and Gandalf, he's given you pictures of Christ that you can find scripturally. So Frodo is the suffering servant, yeah. He is the one who's bearing the burden, he's the one who's weak and pathetic, and you know, can't really do much. He's only just a hobbit, and he will go down through suffering, he will be innocuous, and he will not be seen by Sauron who can only see power. He will not take power for himself and be corrupted. And the weakness of the suffering servant is you know, by his stripes, in a sense, by his suffering journey, the people will be healed. You've then got Aragorn as the returning king, and the one who's been sort of exiled away from his people and living a life sort of as a stranger and and alien in the world, who then comes back to reclaim as the heir of Isildor and and who's going to be the returning king, and then of course Gandalf, and here's a spoiler Gandalf the Grey, after his battle with the Balrog, you shall not pass, will go down into the many, many deep depths before returning. I think is it the Battle of Helm's Deep or wherever it is, and he comes back and he's now Gandalf the White. So he is the resurrected king, the one who's gone down to be raised up, more glorious than before. So you've got these like very strong messianic pictures that are going that are woven into the mythology of Middle Earth. And then the challenge is that we're taking an alternate view of heroism and the hero, taken much more postmodern, much more individualistic, much more in terms of an internal call, which is uh, I think what so far we seem to have seen with Galadriel, um, who is you put it brilliantly, she's more Moana than well.
SPEAKER_03I think with Nori Brandyfoot feels more Moano-y, yeah, yeah. Um than a Bilbo does. Yeah. You know, again, again, you know, adventure is thrust on the hobbits. They they want to stay in the Shire, and yet they they are just thrust out. The adventure sweeps them up, and they've and they don't want to be a hero, they don't want to sacrifice, they just want Elevenzes. Yeah, and and yet Nori Brandyfoot does seem a lot more like Moana, you know, the Shire is too small for me, and I want to I want to be cosmopolitan, uh, you know, I want to go to the big smoke, and and so that's a very modern kind of a hero. And and again, with Galadriel, the call to adventure is this no one else is calling for her to do this apart from herself. And at the moment, it it just looks like a kind of a vengeance thing to avenge her brother's death. But maybe it is to extinguish evil for the sake of Middle-earth. Um, but again, that call comes from within, and and I do wonder whether in the 1930s you've fought at the Somme. What kind of heroism do you have? That the the kind of heroism that you're going to write about is getting swept up into an adventure that you did not choose for yourself. Yeah, yeah. Whereas I wonder in 2022, um, well, certainly pre-2020, uh, the idea of war, famine, and pestilence is not really you're like in in your purview. And so what you and so you're much more the Disney princess. You're much more the adventure, the call to adventure comes from within, and you're you're the sort of the hero that's going to engage with with things off your own bat. And I just I will I'll always remember um Primo Levy, who was uh a Jew at Auschwitz, he survived Auschwitz and wrote a number of harrowing books about it. And uh he uh he went to the States after the after the war and he tells this story of explaining, I think it's to his grandson, about what it was like at Auschwitz. And his grandson was like, Why don't you just beat up the guard, put his uniform on, right, steal his gun, and like oozy your way out of the out of the the camps? And like Primo Levy was like, like, what has Hollywood done to people? And and the sort of the modern the modern idea of the hero is this sort of self willed, sparky, you know, awaken the hero within yourself, and you can kind of do it. But if you've lived through the Somme or if you've lived through Auschwitz, you know that you're just in a meat grinder. And you know, you you just you just must go through this. And I yeah, I just wonder whether the expressive individualist side. of things is is more at the the core of Galadriel, more at the core of Nori than could have ever ever been the case if you were just writing in a post-war setting.
SPEAKER_05I'd be interested to know how much of that story, like the Galadriel stuff, is based on the actual text or how much of that is just, you know, well she's meant to be married at this stage, apparently.
SPEAKER_03So this is made according to the appendices. There's a there are a number of appendices at the end of Lord of the Rings and they tell some of the lore of the second age. But apparently in in that law she is married. But they've obviously taken the decision that she needs to be single because she's found herself on a boat with a strapping lad.
SPEAKER_02And that's the challenge of doing prequels rather than doing sequels, right? So that you've got to land at presumably Cape Planchat's Galadriel at the start of the first Lord of the Rings film. But yeah and what is driving that? What is driving the the the desire for filling in the blanks of the second age of Middle earth right well is it just that the fans were just kind of saying when will someone finally solve this conundrum of how we ever got to this kind of sour on guy in the first place I will never be satisfied that Tolkien knew what he was doing unless Jeffrey Bezos pays someone million dollars a movie or an episode to uh to to tell us this story. We've always been wondering it's not that at all.
SPEAKER_03It's just the fact that there is this franchise with a hole in the plot is probably not even that because but Tolkien's giving you it's a bit of a sandpit it's a bit of a sand and Tolkien has given you some raw materials.
SPEAKER_02In which case play Lord of the Rings Dungeons and Dragons Don't do it for the money. Actually play in it rather than like then charge for tickets. Yeah it's just it's it is it is a cold calculated decision. Okay. If Amazon was to appear as a sort of its equivalent in Middle earth it would not be the good guys. That's the thing you've got to remember. Same with Disney if the Disney corporation appeared in a Disney movie they would not be the good guys. Yeah because that we the baddies.
SPEAKER_03Yes you are okay two things about this and then we should probably wrap up but one is uh people talk about Tolkien washing has the Amazon Prime series been Tolkien washing and by that I guess people think that writing in the 1930s as a traditional Catholic there there are features of Tolkien's world that must be cleansed, that must be corrected and brought up to date. They must be ethnically cleansed ethnically rediversified perhaps uh and then we'll get onto the the the second issue is about like good and evil is it is it just a a kind of a bland black and white kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02But but on the Tolkien washing thing um at at at their strongest what are what are people trying to say in terms of Tolkien needs to be updated I suppose I mean the the thing that's in there is the fact that um you've got Lenny Henry playing a half foot which is a type of hobbit or I don't exactly know a pre-hobbit hobbit. And so people are going oh there's you know there's black and Asian actors being cast in roles which you know the the the the certainly the Lord of the Rings uh films, the Peter Jackson films didn't have an ethnically diverse cast of hobbits. So that's a change you've made since whenever 2001 or whatever it was. So that then feels as though Tolkien and his approach to race or his his view of of uh people has been updated for a 21st century audience. Um well even updated you know for a the th third decade of the 20th cent 21st century. Yeah yeah um so that's what people I I think are anxious about I I don't think is a big deal at all. I d I I I I f I do find the criticism when people say oh if you get upset about black elves then you know they're elves for goodness sake you know and the difficulty with that level of kind of dism dismissiveness around people's concern for taking the the work of Tolkien and then updating it is to say you you can't break this thing. It needs to retain some of its own nature and there's a bit in um orthodoxy where um Chesterton talks about things being sort of according to their their nature um see where I can find it. But he says um yes the artist is is one who anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Now I've got to be careful because I'm not saying you know you can't have a black elf or you can't have a black hobbit. But in a world which is very much about the tolerot as the the generations of these people Hebrew word then people Hebrew word uh you know so it appears throughout the early chapters of Genesis to talk about these are the generations of Adam or Noah or whoever it is you're in a genealogical world and you're in a a world of different kinds of species there are men and there are dwarves and there are elves these are not the same things there are giants there are wizards there are hobbits so you're in a world which has its own sort of nature therefore you need to be able to account for any changes within that nature that you make if if you suddenly decide well all hobbits now have shaved heads or or completely straight hair well that doesn't feel very hobbity. It's not sort of according to the rules of what a hobbit is that were originally written by Tolkien whether or not you think he was right to do that. So the the key thing and Chesterton goes on to say this he says the moment you step into the world of facts you step into a world of limits so there are limits about you can't you can't have an eight foot hobbit. That's that's an odd thing it's it ceases to be a hobbit. Yeah well so he believes in apartheid. So he says yeah um uh you may free a tiger from his bars but do not free him from his stripes do not free a camel of the burden of his hump you may be freeing him from being a camel do not go about as a demagogue encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called The Loves of the Triangles. I never read it but I'm sure that if triangles were ever loved they were loved for being triangular and this is certainly the case with all artistic creations. So it it just is that sense that you you are working with material and therefore you've got restraints on it. You need to somehow have a way of accounting for this and are you then in making these choices dismissing the third age in which there were not you know black hobbits for for example. Yeah so it's just one of those things where you just go from Irish to Scottish oh I mean the accent thing is the other one right in terms of what accents are chosen for the different groups elves must always speak and receive pronunciation. Yeah right you can't have elves going you're archilateral when we're going to go to go on the bounty we've got to go to Gryhvons we're going now come on we're gonna be there eternity it's gonna be great that's not the voice of an elf yeah but if you choose to make that the voice of an elf you somehow need to kind of give an account for it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah yeah yeah and so you know but people would say I mean people would say that that's the you know like if you say oh you've got these hobbits and they've all got some of them Irish some of them sound yeah yeah Jamaican some of them some of them you know sound a bit sort of you know black country kind of area um but there's again what they've done is they've taken you some people would look at that and say oh look at the diversity that they've brought in but because they've got elves who speak in a certain way but you've got the shire the kind of shire folk no they are actually from the shire in this one but they're they're kind of more the country bumpkin kind of characters. You could even you could argue say well they've kind of just a bit of a stereotype there that they've taken these kind of accents and said well these people are all a bit like this aren't they? You know um but yeah I think you're right that stuff has to work within its if you've got a a a universe that you establish and it has its own established laws now some would come in and say oh yeah but it's all made up so you can just do what you like and you go you can do whatever you like but that just completely breaks the whole thing. Like and I mean I I mean I feel this about um about Doctor Who like when they so when they made the doctor into a woman now I would say people go they're an alien they can do what they like and they go yeah but the established history of the show is yeah there are male and female of this species. And it's only you know it seems to me what a coincidence that we've brought this into it when in society it's becoming it's become a political vehicle so you know whilst I'm like I don't have an issue with the character being a woman I'm like it fundament to me it breaks the rules of the show. Yeah and so and and and and on the large scale you go it doesn't really matter just a TV show. Yeah but like it's a valid criticism to say you know you need to work you need to have a reason for that. You can't just go oh we'll just change everything because that's what we fancy doing at the moment. Yeah I think that's kind of what you're getting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah exactly exactly you've got so it it is a bit like the kind of you know the sandbox or the let's pretend thing is that if someone's making their own little pretend world and I say oh we're gonna run over here and and this is a thing and then someone comes over and says something contradicts that we thought well I was actually quite happy playing this I'd like you know just playing this this game and you people might say well that means you can't play with others you're not very good you know as a human being you should learn to compromise you should learn to sort of embrace but in a in a way we want to live in a world that someone has made and which is governed by its own rules and it has its own integrity as a world it's one of the things that makes Marvel so difficult to watch since the end of the Infinity saga is the fact that they keep on undermining their own premise all the time so that if they're not going to take it seriously then why should anyone else and if I if it's just a joke if every single film is just a comedy well we're actually we become we become poorer for it because and that and that's one of the things I do actually really like about this this this TV show is that it is taking itself seriously. I mean some people might want think it be too poed. I think it's genuine and the people are are acting out their fantasy drama their elves and and dwarves in a way that that shows that they they care about it. They think it's got value.
SPEAKER_03But getting back to Lenny Henry I don't think any of us had any problem believing that he was a Hobbit or a pre-hobbit hobbit whatever form he's in that he's a kind of a shy folk. And I think in the in the conversation here there's a level of how you view it that is above the level of what you think is going on in the story. And I think in 2022 the viewer just necessarily notices when every character is white because that's just that's not the world that you live in when you watch the BBC you know even you know even crime dramas that are set in Scotland that is overwhelmingly white suddenly you know the DCI who shows up is black and his girlfriend is Asian and every like like and but we we expect a diversity on screen. And you almost start to notice it when you don't and and so and so in one sense when you see Lenny Henry as a as a hobbit type character that's that's kind of he's more invisible in 2022 than he would have been in in 2001 for instance and much more invisible and and and he would have been extremely visible if he was in the 50s or or but he still looks like Lenny Henry doesn't hear that you mean Lenny's got a character he's called Lenny Henry in the sort of fear. But what the 2022 decision relies on is a certain colour blindness. Which I think is fascinating because because actually some of the some of the people who are most in favour of saying no you don't break the rules hobbits they're white you know tend to be the sort of people who like the Martin Luther King thing and the colour blindness and you should be judged by the content of your character not by the colour of your skin. And actually as soon as you buy okay Lenny Henry is a hobbit and his great great great great great great grandson is going to be Ian what's his name you know in in home you know as soon as you buy that you've become really quite colourblind haven't you? Right yeah yeah you know and I think in quite a pleasing way so I I I think you can fall into I think there's there's a whole bunch of people who are falling off either side of the wrong horse on this and the the sort of people who you know underneath the John Lewis you know Christmas commercial say oh every couple's a mixed race couple you can't get away from mixed race couples I think that is ridiculous but I think it's just as ridiculous as the as the person who complains that all the contestants for Miss Scotland are white. And and it like they are both they are both mirror images of the same folly really and and actually I I do wonder whether you know a len a Lenny Henry as a hobbit as soon as you buy that and go with it and just say at the level of me viewing it whatever but I understand that hobbits are all of one kind and I understand that that he is the ancestor of a whole bunch of people who end up being white actually you end up you end up at quite a colourblind kind of place when you when you believe that.
SPEAKER_02And in a weird way Lenny Henry sounds like a hobbit kind of name right and that's the name then going back to the the you know the linguistic thing and the name thing yeah when you are when you are creating a fictional world you choose names for your characters. That's one of the things that Lewis picks up on just to read his thing I did promise we'd look at this so when Lewis is writing his basically review of the Lord of the Rings um I mean he's he's very positive about it Tolkien was famously a bit more dismissive of uh the Narnio Chronicles um but uh this is what uh Lewis Lewis says um the utterly new achievement of Professor Tolkien is that he carries a comparable sense of reality unaided probably no book yet written in the world is quite such a radical in instance of what its author has elsewhere called subcreation. The direct debt there are of course subtler kinds of debt which every author must owe to the actual universe is here deliberately reduced to the minimum. So he's properly making something as different from the real world as as kind of as is possible, suggests Lewis. He says not content to create his own story, he creates with an almost insolent prodigality that's a nice phrase insolent prodigality the whole world in which it is to move with its own theology, myths, geography, history, paleography, languages and orders of beings a world full of strange creatures beyond count. The names alone are a feast where the redolent of quiet countryside, Michael Delving, Southfarthing I don't know if it's Michael or Michelle Delving, I don't know tall and kingly, Boromir, Faramir, Ellendil, loathsome like Smeagol, who is also Gollum, or frowning in the evil strength of Barador or Gorgoroth, yet best of all Lothlorian Gilthoniel Galadriel when they embody that piercing high elvish beauty of which no other prose writer has captured so much. So he's really dialing into the fact that Tolkien's ability to create using words is unparalleled. Yeah and he does that because he's he's studied language he knows the kind of assonance and resonance and the and the and the the metrics of language and so therefore when he builds a world he's using language with all of the kind of um cultural recognition that these languages have come from different people different places. So I think that's part of the conversation it has to be part of the conversation any conversation around um around Lord of the Rings in Middle earth.
SPEAKER_03Yep yeah so I did promise we'll we'll think about good and evil um sometimes people say okay it's it's just a story of goodies and baddies which I think um runs into the issue that in the Lord of the rings it's it's actually quite complicated the golem is a you know uh a kind of a fallen hobbit who is corrupted by the ring and even even like Frodo is kind of is very corruptible and could be corrupted and it's not and it's not that the goodies should get their hands on the power so they can defeat the the baddies it's it's not that the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Is to give up power which is a very cruciform kind of thing. So that that that's a really kind of complex story of good and evil. Yeah. And in these episodes I think I think again we're not we're not seeing a a basic thing of of goodies and baddies. Galadriel is a is a complex character all all of a sudden.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I I think they they we resist um a kind of good and evil um simplification there's concern about you know the the white hats and black hats of kind of oversimplistic kind of um ethics in the storytelling I think just reading through that was one of the criticisms of Beowulf. Okay. And Tolkien talks about that and he says that you know some of the you know m other mythologists are saying well hold on we've got the Iliad and we've got the Odyssey look at these great southern mythologies where they're complicated characters and all this kind of rich kind of stuff and this Beowulf stuff is just far too kind of simplistic and and Christian. And Tolkien says well I'm I'm I'm sorry that that's how you feel but that's there's more going on in these characters than that and yet there is something to hold on to in this world building of Beowulf and in and in Middle earth that you actually have nowhere to stand ethically or morally within something like the Iliad or within the um within the Odyssey there is a there is a difficulty in getting your ethical bearings in those books. Right right right right and the god the gods are rapists it's kind of hard to and so to have you know a vision or a view of theology which is is that it God is the highest good and and and governs according to that and that evil is an imposition. What was that first line from the nothing is evil in the beginning big first line and there was a time when the world was so young there had not yet been a sunrise but even then there was light now we're uh imposing the idea that there was good in the beginning rather than and that this light was good which is a profoundly you know um Christian thing to say but that here to s to suggest that evil must enter in parasitically it must come secondarily it must it must invade from you know that which was original. Yeah a huge part of Tolkien and Lewis and and Chesterton's kind of narrative apologetics and all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_03And the thing that complexifies um the whole thing is there's this um story that it's told about Finrod who is Galadriel's brother um and before he dies um he he asks and and we've referenced it already do you do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot? Because the stone sees only downward the darkness of the water is vast and irresistible. The ship fills the darkness as well, striving moment by moment to master her and pull her under but the ship has a secret For unlike the stone, her gaze is not downwards but up, fixed upon the light that guides her, whispering of grander things than darkness ever knew. And again, you're you're sort of thinking, okay, there's a grand battle between good and evil, and the thing to do is to avoid falling down to the darkness and instead go up to the light. What does the hero do? Galadriel in episode one, so it's not much of a spoiler, is offered heaven, as it were, and instead jumps ship. And they even you know the we have a flashback to this quote from her brother where she goes down into the darkness, but there is a struggle there. Um and I forget what there's something that he whispers to her in that in that moment.
SPEAKER_02Touch the darkness. That's the that how will you know?
SPEAKER_03I mean, she's sort of saying how she says that there's lights above and there's lights reflected in the water. How do you know whether to go towards the light or the light that's reflected in the water? And he says something like she said you've got to touch Justin Hawkins from the Dark Light.
SPEAKER_04Touching me!
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's what she says. But yeah, so in arguably you could put a a a Christian angle on that and say, Well, unless you have gone into the pit, you will never, you know, and gone in through the darkness, you'll never see what the light is. Um I I think there's there's something in that I think part what I think they're wanting to show is that the the key thing is her freedom as an individual character. I think that's what they're trying to preserve. Um I don't think it's ne it's necessarily a uh an anti-Tolkien idea. I think there are the characters are are wrestling with things and the power of evil and the power of of uh and the power of power to corrupt um is uh is very strong in the in the books. Uh it has a a decaying quality upon the human soul. Yeah. And that is something that must be resisted, and when it cannot be resisted, someone else is gonna have to step in and and get rid of it for you. Right. Um but I think yes, I I do think that the criticism of Lord of the Rings that it's far too uh simplistic morally is not really fair. I think here it will it remains to be seen what they do with these characters and how they how they change.
SPEAKER_05I mean Boromir is another good example, isn't he? Boromir, so I mean I I saw some in uh someone reacting to Lord of the Rings and they were constantly on Boromir going, this guy's a bad dude, you know, like yada yada yeah, and it's like they completely miss the completely miss the point that of course Boromir is being influenced by this ring, and you know, it and it it does something to him, it corrupts him. But when he's free from that influence, actually, you know, he says, I would have gone with you, you know, um, you know, my captain, my king, and he obviously sacrifices himself for the sake of the hobbits. Um so that's all the way through Lord of the Rings, isn't it? That kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02And those, you know, the those um apparently pristine, morally upstanding groups, well, they're not. If you actually look at what the the Shire is like, and we've you know the the the sense of of gossiping and the sense of of self-preservation, and and there they are being challenged through the story to to resist the temptations to prize comfort above all else, right? That it's clearly something the story is doing. Similarly, the worlds of men, um, as we have here, are worlds which have have begun to rot and decay, right? There are there are stewards who will not give up their their position, right? They won't they won't uh accede to the the the rightful heir or the rightful king. So you have all of that that's going on there. Um I suppose what's difficult is to see you know the the idea of Sauron as the as as true evil, as a kind of as a resolutely evil character. Yeah. And that's probably what we have more of an issue with in the twenty first century is that any villain is unredeemable, but surely not. You know, wouldn't it be a better story if Sauron became friends? You know, if they all Moana again.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, like in like the Marvel universe, like Thanos is depicted, isn't he, as the big bad, but yet when it comes down to it, you kind of go, Well, he just wants to he sees that the what the universe isn't sustainable with all these people. So yeah, he wants to wipe out half the population, but it's a sacrifice, his willing. Yeah, you're like, hmm, maybe he's maybe he's the good guy, maybe he's onto the right thing, you know. Like utilitarian era.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll see what happens with Sauron because we don't know if we've already seen Sauron in these first two episodes. He will be embodied in the second age of The Lord of the Rings. We have he has not been named. Maybe we haven't yet met him, maybe he is one of these mystery figures who we've already met. But I I yeah, I I would I would bet money that Sauron will become complexified and he's not all bad, is he? Yeah, yeah. We'll see. We'll see.
SPEAKER_05He just had a bad relationship with him.
SPEAKER_02He had his reasons, yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_05He's bullied at school. Might be. Might be it.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant. Well, should we call it a day? Yeah, absolutely. There's so many more things I want to read from these books, though, but I'll have to do them by myself. Um, I do all actually, before we do go, I do want to recommend this this little book, which is just quite a fun picture book. It's called John Ronald's Dragons, the story of J. R. R. Tolkien by Caroline McAllister, illustrated by Eliza Wheeler. I can show that. It's just a really sweet little picture book. I mean, I I think it's it's not exactly the most historically accurate genesis for John Ronald's Dragons, but certainly it it just draws you in. And if you've got a young child who's interested in the things of Middle Earth and the law and the folklore, then um yeah. It's a great fun.
SPEAKER_03Uh before we leave, people just want to say uh we just at the weekend uh had an event with Tom Holland and Paul Vandercle, Christy Mayer up at Oak Hill, and uh it was a great uh afternoon and evening, and we packed out uh Oak Hill Theological College, and the video of that will be coming soon. So do stay tuned for that, and probably we'll have some podcast stuff from that. But uh Tom Holland was on excellent form railing against uh religion GCSEs and thought for the day in in yeah, in typical Tom Holland form. It was delicious. Yeah, yeah. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER_05Brilliant. Great. Well, guys, thanks very much for the discussion. Uh hope you enjoyed it. Maybe you'll go out and check out Rings of Power, see what you think. Let us know down in the comments, and yeah, join us again next week for some more discussion. Take care. Bye. Bye.
SPEAKER_01Well, there we go. That is the end of the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Do subscribe to the Speak Life podcast on your podcatcher of choice if you haven't done so already. Rating and review uh really help the show get seen and heard by more people. And do subscribe to the Speak Life YouTube channel as well. You can find the visuals, uh the videos for all of these episodes and lots of other bits of content as well. So do go and check that out. Well, that's all from me. God bless, and see you next week.