Wright’s Writing Corner: The Desolation of Tolkien! Or “Bang, Bang Jackson’s Banana Hammer Came Down Upon His Head!”

Next week we have a great treat, a guest blog by author Michael J. Sullivan on the subject of the writing market today. 

This week, we have something rather different. Below is the funniest movie review I have ever read. Of course, it will not be quite as funny for you all, because A) the author is not reading it aloud, and B) the word "stupid" and "stupidity" has not been replaced with the word "banana."

When John read it aloud last night, the Cherubim was in the room. We did not want him to start repeating the words he was hearing, so John read it with the word "stupid" replaced with the word "banana." The Banana Hammer was so funny that I fear one of the children may have suffered a laughter-induced injury. (Maybe not…but there was a great deal of gasping and flopping around due to the overwhelming force of laughing.)

How, you ask, does this have to do with writing? In among the bellyaching and humor are some observations about Tolkien's writing and the purpose of various scenes.

Enjoy!

PS. The part about me shouting "Shoot him!" at the screen is entirely true…as is that my mom was with us.

 

the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-poster

What is missing from this poster?

 

The Hobbit: the Desolatioin of Tolkien by John C. Wright

I loved the first Hobbit movie and hated, hated, hated the second. It was stupid on every level of stupidity. It is rightly to be called THE DESOLATION OF TOLKIEN.

Before swan-diving into the sewer of total stupidity that is the DESOLATION movie, my intractable Southern courtesy requires that I say something good about this movie. Well, as it happens, there was not just one thing good about this movie, there were three: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, and Richard Armitage. They played their parts so well, that I feel I have met the real Gandalf, Bilbo and Thorin.

Sylvester McCoy did his best with what he was given, but the movie maker put bird poop in his hair. Which is not, come to think of it, so very different from what the movie maker did to us, his audience. This was to make Rhadaghast the Brown, the divine and august Istari who journeyed from the Blessed Lands beyond the Uttermost West to aid Middle Earth in its dark hour, to be as silly-looking a human whoopee cushion as possible.

On to what I hated with a nerdrageous passion that knows no sense of proportion: let us start at the beginning.

Read the rest here:

 

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