The WORST(?) Lord of the Rings Documentary

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Watch the Origin of the Rings here: • J.R.R.Tolkien - Origin...
Today, I nitpick one of the worst Lord of the Rings Documentaries I've ever seen.
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[@Peregrin3]

C.S. Lewis would have had a field day with that psychotherapist. He made a very strong point about the difference between playing at being grown up and actually being grown up and for him embracing fantasy without guilt is a sign of someone who is actually grown up because people who reject it as childish are insecure in their maturity. This is a rough idea of what he thought but I may have gotten something wrong so feel free to correct me.😅

[@silverhawkscape2677]

In short. If you are comfortable with your Maturity it wont be shaken. 😊

[@MrRourk]

Gollum was just a normal hobbit exposed to Agent Orange.

[@Dman9fp]

*Smeagol. Gollum was always a creep..

[@ThatGuy-bh9qh]

"Merry the trees are talking!" Nam flashback. Fortunate Son starts playing.

[@benblair2591]

The footage isn't Vietnam, it's WW2 training films. Equally not WW1 but important to note.

[@erickpoorbaugh6728]

9:45 On that note, I remember hearing that Shakespeare tended to write his tragedies when he was happy and his comedies during hard times in his life.

[@foxyboiiyt3332]

As Tolkien said in many interviews about his time serving in Vietnam "You wouldn't know, you weren't there!"

[@edamamame4U]

Okay, I just want to kindly say that many people who play table top games are not "missing something developmentally" and I despise that really harmful and cruel stereotype. As a linguist, I thoroughly love the complex world building that table top games offer and enjoy playing with friends after a busy day at work. I also adore Tolkien's work and have to say that your channel is brilliant and incredibly well-informed and researched. I hope that your channel continues to grow!

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

This is a great note, thanks for mentioning it! I probably should have been more clear that I think the psychologist is pretty out of line with that claim. Roleplaying games are great for mental health, and as somebody who spent 4 years getting a degree in acting, I absolutely see the value in pretending to be someone else for a while. Thanks for pointing that out and for the kind words!

[@chipparmley]

She sounded like her knowledge of role playing games ended with the Satanic Panic of the 80's

[@DrCruel]

I really do miss AD&D and RPGs in general, back when everyone who plays wasn't a woke asshole.

[@Rabbithole8]

I curious about what kind of linguist you are?

[@richardgale4827]

@@chipparmley Still hasn't forgiven the DM for killing her Ranger back in college, maybe.

[@grokeffer6226]

One of the themes of LOTR seemed to me to be PTSD. I imagine he had quite a few unpleasant memories that he had a very hard time coping with. I know that I certainly would have.

[@TallisKeeton]

like watching his friends being blownup before his eyes that nothing could be found to make a burial ? yep, that sort of thing.

[@micahphilson]

Pssh, that's clearly not true, all of his writings are purely whimsical and happy, so he was clearly a purely happy author! The expert distinctly said that in the video!

[@grokeffer6226]

@@micahphilson I seriously doubt that you've ever read any Tolkien, or anything else for that matter.

[@DoDerTwist]

@@grokeffer6226I think you missed the joke.

[@garethjones2596]

@@grokeffer6226 it's called irony; literary people use it all the time.

[@chables74]

Edith as a person is such a constant theme is Tolkiens writing that I honestly don’t know how you do a doc on his life and work without talking about her more

[@dmgroberts5471]

Arwen, Luthien, and Melian all literally _are_ Edith, after all.

[@patchup]

Why do I feel like that glass of water should have been a glass of wine, considering what it probably took to go through the "documentary."

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

If it wasn't 10am when I filmed that video, it most assuredly would have been something stronger than water

[@crane8819]

What makes that psychotherapist's view on tabletop gamer's "developmental inefficiencies" even funnier or insulting is that she said in a documentary about a man who, if he had been born a few decades later, probably would have played fantasy tabletop RPG's himself. And would have been an amazing DM.

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

fun fact Tolkien was actually a member of a table-top society in Oxford... they would do long story quest re-enactments based on old English mythos, with what was effectively a GM (called a judge) setting up different challenges for Arthurian Knights or travelling Magicians, which they had to verbally describe the way to overcome... everyone always wanted Tolkien to DM but he was much too interested in the playing side

[@Laurelin70]

@@stanislavkostarnov2157 Source? This is very interesting, but I never heard of it, and I spent quite a bit of time studying and researching Tolkien and his biography. So if you could provide a reliable source I could give this precious info to the Tolkien Cultural Association I am a member of.

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

@@Laurelin70 I am not 100% sure of it's accuracy, since I have not properly verified it for myself. this is information (at the time I was still technically President of the "LHS Tolkienist Society", though I already graduated the High School) is as it was told to me by fellow Tolkienists when visiting Oxford, as they gave me a personal tour of the city... The spot they showed me (telling me the story I outlined) was a small one room café/society, consisting of an underground room below the back of what looked like a large Georgian period gothic building, it's location, somewhere between Pitt-Rivers Museum and the Cherwell Boathouse (but I do not know Oxford well enough to say exactly where)... which part of the story was officially told by the club, and which by my guides I do not remember, but I believe, the room itself had part of the story written as a mural on the wall, so they also claimed it to be true... maybe this is all just part of the accumulated Tolkienist Mythos... maybe, actual truth. no academic source available I am afraid... to me, it fits him as a personality so well that I think it sounds true, but, that is only my loose conjecture.

[@thomaswalsh4552]

Until he describes the 507th tree you pass before reaching your first decision. Nothing against him, but I feel his style might be a little too drawn out and atmospheric even for D&D; he’d bring the stereotype to new heights.

[@prettyokandy230]

in the documentary's defense: tolkien probably had a few happy hours as a baby which basically means he had a nice childhood, right? RIGHT?!?!

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

Ah, the sublime post-womb, pre-awareness days...bliss...

[@DrCruel]

@@Jess_of_the_Shire Like being woke but without the racist hypocrisy.

[@lordedmundblackadder9321]

@@DrCruel are you actually mentally ill. Because every comment you’ve made on this video are just “woke bad! Woke bad!”, in reply to comments that have nothing do with... your perception of “wokeness.” and I genuinely think you need professional help.

[@dmgroberts5471]

Well...apart from that time a giant spider bit him in South Africa...

[@Anacronian]

Fun fact. Sergeant Barnes in Platoon is based on Tolkien's experiences in Vietnam.

[@fransoosthuizen2151]

Didn’t know the Brits/ South African fought in vietnam

[@DrDoom-ph4gi]

There must be some kind of way out of here… said the Hobbit to the tree…

[@dmgroberts5471]

@@fransoosthuizen2151 Funnily enough we did, just not "officially." A lot of British servicemen transferred to the Australian Army and were deployed in Vietnam that way. Not that that has anything to do with this "documentary" and it's poor sourcing of footage.

[@dukefanshawe6815]

Tolkin fought in WW1 did he go to Vietnam on vacation? Or was he deployed there?

[@TomMSTie1138]

During the Vietnam conflict, Tolkien befriended a young filmmaker named George Lucas, who used his experiences as a basis for his film...the Ewok Adventure.

[@jeffbriem]

Essentially happy man bothered me too. By the end of World War 1, all but one of his friends were dead. He had great joy in his relationship with his wife, but he had trouble maintaining friendships.

[@dmgroberts5471]

Knowing that the Dead Marshes was based on him seeing the dismembered corpses of people he served with lying in pools of stagnant water that had collected in artillery craters, I would be very worried about anyone who seemed "very happy" having seen that in their youth. Very emotionally repressed, sure. Smiling through the sadness and pain, maybe. Very happy? Fuck off, Michael. Seriously, who is this fucking armchair guy? Did they just look up the nearest British person who'd written something about Tolkien?

[@Laurelin70]

And also his relationship with his wife wasn't always perfect and loving: there were misunderstandigs, different interests, Edith often felt lonely because John left her at home to go and meet his friends at the pub, and she was disappointed because she had to renounce to a promising career as pianist. It was a very normal wife-husband relationship, with his highs and lows.

[@mutterslog785]

It's nice to listen to someone who reflects my sentiments on Tolkien. My friends, family, girlfriend, and strangers all walk away from me when I go on one of my "rants."

[@yrtepgold]

15:00 "An optical illusion designed to specifically make me nauseous" 😂 That is so spot on. After that one I knew you had a lot of fun making this video and I had to watch the rest.

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

actually quite like it myself... I mean that design

[@chipparmley]

You making it through the entire documentary is impressive.

[@saelind73]

Well, she made it through the entire RoP crap, and liked it. So, a low budget crap docu who doesn't have the pretense of "go back to the books", shouldn't be that hard really.

[@daveofyorkshire301]

Tolkien was born in 1892 and died in 1973, to serve in Vietnam he would have been 63 at the start of the war and already dead at the end of it...

[@JS-mp7fy]

That footage that is referenced is from WW2 Pacific campaign, not Vietnam. Still wrong of course.

[@daveofyorkshire301]

@@JS-mp7fy He was of the age to be in WWII. Although he didn't go fight, he was a codebreaker (cryptography) from what I understand...

[@Trucmuch]

the irony of making fun of the documentary for using Vietnam footage "Did they think we wouldn't notice?" while failing to notice that it's not actually Vietnam footage at all...

[@rburns9730]

4:32 "WWI was his own personal Vietnam". Continuity restored 😂

[@dumbthrowaway2798]

Regarding the "They can't be happy" discussion, another example I hear brought up a lot (though it may be reductive) is to compare the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Junji Ito. Miyazaki has directed the bulk of the Studio Ghibli films which are largely whimsical and optimistic, though you can certainly find examples of him being jagged and confrontational. Meanwhile, Ito is probably the best known horror manga author, which means he also draws the terrifying stuff in his works, but he seems to just be a pretty polite mild-mannered fella. Also the absolutely horrific stuff in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul vs Vince Gilligan, the original creator lol

[@allisongliot]

10:09 thank you for your discussion of being able to create art/stories that don’t directly correlate to exact experiences and mental states of the creator!

[@jerrydrouillard]

The destruction of the trees by Saruman was inspired by Tolkien visiting his childhood playground and finding it had been strip mined. The fires of Mount Doom reflect the artillery of World War I.

[@brendanmooney7607]

I was hoping we'd get a bonus making-of featurette at the end of this video (including a shot of you applying questionable orc-prosthetics to Dillon's face) - but still, fantastic start to your trilogy of doc vids 😊

[@brendanmooney7607]

@@esmeralda8763 There are still at least two more videos in this series, so it's not impossible! 😀 BTW I hope your copies of the books arrive soon & that you enjoy the reading experience - and don't get discouraged if there are parts in LOTR that you find boring or infodump-y: Tolkien is like someone's great-grandfather telling you an amazing story, but sometimes going on tangents about what specific types of trees are in a forest, or explaining in detail the family history of a side-character and then never bringing them up again after. Lots of us love that about his writing, but the books can be rough for people with shorter attention spans or who prefer plot development over worldbuilding and character exploration.

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

Ah jeez, that would have been perfect...I've been a fool.

[@brendanmooney7607]

@@Jess_of_the_Shire

[@bjones8470]

I really like the Lynch Dune. I know the new one is going to be a far more sweeping epic and a more serious film but Lynch’s is wild and kind of wacky and while at the time of its release I thought it was ok, as of late I’ve come to appreciate it more for the time in which it was made

[@paulmartin5479]

Agreed. Lynch's treatment of the Harkonnens was always a bit too cheese-villain for me, but overall I really like it.

[@axelNodvon2047]

I really liked the sets and costumes of that movie

[@TomorrowWeLive]

At least it wasn't rampantly blackwashed

[@jimmcclung9067]

Sorry, that wasn’t Viet Nam footage but World War II to be exact.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

In other words this early 2000s Tolkien _documentary_ is about as ACCURATE as the recent Netflix *CLEOPATRA* documentary...🙄

[@AverageCommentor]

I guess you could put it that way.

[@davidroddick91]

I got that DVD when it came out, and watched it immediately. I have no memory of the contents, only that I never felt the desire to watch it again. It is still sitting on my shelf, gathering dust. Michael Coren is a bit of an odd choice to have on as a Tolkien expert. He had a show on a Christian television network here in Canada, and his religious beliefs are forefront in his writings, even though he doesn't seem to know what they are. Born Jewish, he converted to Catholicism, then became an Evangelical, then a Catholic again, and now Anglican. He became an Evangelical because "at least they have a consistent set of beliefs." After years of railing out against homosexuality, he became an Anglican because of their acceptance of same-sex marriage.

[@MannyBrum]

One thing a lot of documentaries miss is how much a love letter to England LotR is. If you study early medieval English history and the Old English language you pull back the curtain on Tolkien's mindset when writing and the inner workings of his mind are laid bare.

[@SnkrPrince]

Oh my gosh! I just found your channel yesterday and you had 6000 subscribers, and you just doubled that! Congratulations!

[@DanCooper404]

Tripled now.

[@AverageCommentor]

Quadrupled now.

[@JonathanRossRogers]

4:31 BTW, that's probably footage of US soldiers or marines in the Pacific theater during WWII.

[@joesmith2691]

The fact they are also showing ww2 British troops is even more of an insult

[@younggunpark]

3K subs and this video is from a month ago? You're at 45.3K today! I also just watched Faramir: Book Vs Movie and I can see what you meant by an overwhelming growth. Cheers to you! You're storytelling is great and I'd say you earned it!

[@dementiasorrow]

10:30 I felt like a husk of a person for an entire week. IT WAS INCREDIBLE 😅 I laughed so hard at this lol Channeling that wednesday vibe. 😂

[@assgrabberb]

Never have I seen such a Wizard. Ever. I think.

[@ronbenvenutijr1289]

Don’t you dare compare yourself to this low budget “mock”umentary! Your work is remarkable and scholarly. (Almost) every video feels like a professional dissertation. And your aesthetically pleasing voice makes digesting the content an absolute joy. Thank you for helping me to get through my work days. I am enjoying working my way through your incredible collection of content.

[@lamecasuelas2]

I was expecting just a few laughs but this was a very well done and insightful exploratión, kudos!

[@leonwilkinson8124]

Great fun! Love your snark. Glad I missed that "documentary."

[@dakinayantv3245]

That documentary looks like something from the History channel.

[@markcreemore4915]

"Every minute I stay in Rivendell, I get weaker, and every minute The Witch King of Angmar squats in Mirkwood, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter."

[@eddhardy1054]

3:03...Well you've already taught me something new. I always thought Tolkien was born in the 1890s, I never knew he was knocking around in early industrial England (1760-1840). Fascinating 😉😊🤣

[@christopherdean1326]

He fought in the trenches of WW1, a few miles along the front from my grandfather.....

[@dennismason3740]

Your dedication is awesome.

[@hecklinjekyll3959]

So, part of the documentary is documenting how they made the documentary? I've been inspired to make a film called "Documentary" which is a documentary so full of itself that the audience literally can't tell what the film is documenting. 😂

[@eljanrimsa5843]

Just don't show them how the one mask is made and you are fine

[@sourisvoleur4854]

I'd watch it.

[@jonathanj8303]

I mean, it gets double duty out of all that footage. Gotta keep it under budget.

[@sourisvoleur4854]

@@eljanrimsa5843 One mask to mask them all, one mask to hide them....

[@mikedelgrande5296]

I totally feel you on annoying ppl with an infinite amount of Tolkien lore. I can’t sit through even one of the movies without going into extensive detail about ppl, places and LOTR lore in general. I’m the only actual fan that I personally know so it kinda sucks not having ppl to talk to about it.

[@dmgroberts5471]

My stepmother once asked me a question about LoTR, and I had to warn her that, yes, I could answer her question, but it wouldn't make any sense without 20 minutes of backstory. But still, isn't it great knowing all that stuff? It makes both book and movie so much more rewarding. For instance, in the extended edition of Fellowship, in the scene where Aragorn briefly explains Beren and Luthien to Frodo, did you notice he basically edits the story to better reflect his angst about whether Arwen will stay with him in Middle-Earth? When Frodo asks what happens in the story, Aragorn just says, "she died," as if that's where the story ends. If you know Beren and Luthien, that's _not_ how it ends, at all. While I'm sure the parallel to his worries about Arwen were intended, I don't know if Peter Jackson intended to show that Aragorn was _so_ worried that he was twisting an uplifting love story into a tragedy by dwelling on the lowest point, but if you know the lore, it says a lot about Aragorn's mental state at the time.

[@mikedelgrande5296]

@@dmgroberts5471 oh for sure! I’m currently doing a reread of LOTR and I’m always blown away by how incredibly well written it is. I absolutely love the movies but the books are something special. They’re so dense and long that there’s alway new little details that I had forgotten about. I know that the Tom Bombadil part would have messed up the pace of the movies but I would have loved to see that on screen. Tom playing with the ring like it was nothing more than a trinket. Or the scene with Farmer Maggot. Or the scene with the Elves after Maggot drops them off would have been great. I’m just now starting The Two Towers so I’m sure there’s plenty more little details I’ll rediscover as I’m reading through them. I’ve spent so many hours digging through LOTR wiki and I always find new and interesting lore. It’s like an endless treasure trove of lore

[@tabby_cat]

There are places online where people discuss these things, like The Tolkien Forum for example.

[@TallisKeeton]

Besides one recent documentary from French TV (I guess it was on Canal+), one from National Geografic (AFAIR before the premiere of TTT), and one from late 90s made by BBC with Judy Dench as narrator I realy got no idea that any other documentaries in that topic existed. So thanks for info :)

[@panhandlersparadise1733]

My dad came home from Vietnam in 1968. He got married in 1969, my brother was born in 1970, I was post-dated claimborn in 1971. I served in Vietnam under the "Babies with Bombs" program. There was always some sort of tear gas, pipe bomb, or hand grenade hidden in my diaper.

[@TheConfessor]

I presume you've seen the trilogy of documentaries host by a Not Yet Dwalin Graham McTavish? Less a documentary and more a two hour summary of each of the books, they're surprisingly not bad.

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

I haven't! I'll have to check them out, thanks for the recommendation!

[@ericjohnson9623]

@Part Time Hobbit I think there are actually four, one for The Hobbit too! They are fascinating cause they are totally book focused breakdowns with talking heads mixed in with folk music and The Brothers Hildebrandt artwork. Do be warned though, they tend to go over some of the same material and reuse talking heads across the four videos.

[@adamdavis1648]

Where did Graham McTavish play Dwalin?

[@knightrider585]

Dune (1984) was one of the best movies ever made, disappointingly let down by its audiences.

[@bjones8470]

I’m with you. Just rewatched it again a couple weeks ago. It’s awesome.

[@lamecasuelas2]

Dune it's a mess. A very enjoyable and interesting mess nonetheless

[@Fatherofheroesandheroines]

4:33..not to be the "umm actually" guy but..UMMM ACTUALLY (lol)...that's WORLD WAR II..not Vietnam.

[@Jamie_Pritchard]

From your intro I thought this was going to be about Rings of Power...

[@treyokelly9662]

Glad that Woman Alert system activated. Whew! Close one.

[@richardjames6947]

Brilliantly worded, analyzed and presented. Thank you.

[@Indra-Ant]

Dear Jess by the window. Something makes me think that the table top games segment was what they wanted to make a documentary on... but when they figured out they couldn't sell it, they pivoted to Lord of The Rings.

[@knitsoft]

These are seriously so entertaining 😂

[@knitsoft]

Also, WOW this came out 3 months ago. You went from 3,000 subscribers to 23,000 fast! Congratulations!

[@fredkrissman6527]

THIS is hilarious! Thanx for the laughs. I'm just grateful that, despite many quibbles, PeterJ got it right with LOTR... I also wish I could say that for the subsequent TheHobbit "trilogy," but I even liked that far better than DavidL's Dune!!!

[@Fionalah]

Now I actually want to see a movie about the Professor fighting in Vietnam! But srsly, some tabletop games are genuine works of art. The One Ring game adopts the material brilliantly and is a heartfelt love-letter to the books from Italian authors Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi. Even if games aren't your thing, I this you'd love glancing through the books.

[@mjlamey1066]

Haven't watched yet, but the Ring is an allegory for Agent Orange

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

Now that would have been a bold move

[@shawnwarrynn8609]

​@@Jess_of_the_Shire But Tolkien hated Allegory, and did everything he could to avoid putting Allegory into his works.

[@davidgill3356]

@@shawnwarrynn8609I think you missed the joke buddy.

[@KevDaly]

Micahel Coren clearly never read "On Fairy Stories" or he would have noted what Tolkien said about "escape" as one of the advantages of fairy stories. For context, when the LOTR movies were released there was still a common prejudice that people who liked fantasy were weirdos, and it it was a common affectation among literary snobs to dismiss Tolkien as "not literature" (just as many fans of so-called "serious music" used to despise The Beatles)

[@bhurtpore]

Military footage is WWII not Vietnam

[@treyokelly9662]

As an avid TTRPG game master (sometimes player) thats... Ugh. Lol Tolkein and Vance had large influence on the origins of Dungeons and Dragons and other ttrpgs at the onset. Also I'd say that saying people who play TTRPGs arw somehow developmentally flawed is ridiculous. Its social, it's improv theatre, storytelling. This is a rant but dang. 😂

[@richardhunn9737]

I'd like to hear her expert take on Kubrick's moon footage...

[@johnlinley2702]

That's not Viet Nam footage. It is film from one of the Pacific Islands filmed in World War II.

[@ExUSSailor]

Well, that was actually World War 2 footage, not, Vietnam. Still, just as wrong.

[@jakubotevrel5058]

Banger :-) You would make a great film critic...

[@rismyth1]

It was a hidden camera interview.... that's why... the bag with the camera was sitting on a bench next to them.... Edit: 3K subscribers.... so you exploded soon after this. Because a mear 45 days later and you are at 38.7K. Congratulations! You are doing marvelous work.

[@joshuacooley1417]

"actually!" So to your point about this being early 20th century British Academia and most people were Christians. This is really not the case. Oxford was rather unique at the time for having a strong Christian contingent and culture, but even there it was far from universal. The idea that academia at the time was mostly Christian is quite inaccurate. Lewis in particular, and especially after he moved to Cambridge, faced a lot of opposition specifically because he was a Christian. Lewis was not a Christian when the Kolbitar club was formed, but I believe he was by the time the Inklings began meeting. You are, however, correct that not all of the Inklings were Christians, and even those who were had fairly widely divergent brands of Christianity. The Inklings were, for the most part, just a group of friends who were mostly of an intellectual bent, who enjoyed hanging out and talking about literature, philosophy, history, etc. They did tend to have a common philosophy and mindset, and some of them (including Tolkien) did deliberately set out to have an impact on culture through their literary and poetic art. I think the reason why their Christianity stands out is because these guys were world class minds, with world class educations, and they didn't just have religion as like a tag along. They thought deeply about it, and their religious views were deeply integrated into their philosophy and everything about their intellectual life. As a result the Inklings essentially started a movement that is still alive and influential today, which is in equal measure, literary, philosophical, and religious.

[@kholui]

Just a nitpick of your nitpicks. Tolkien's childhood is very much not 'early industrial England'. The industrial revolution had begun in Britain more than a century and a half earlier. Granted though he lamented the creeping effects of industrialisation on the area he grew up in.

[@dmgroberts5471]

The idea that LoTR was just a sequel to the Hobbit is...madness. I mean, come on, did they not bother to look up the Silmarillion, or could they just not conceptualize it in words?

[@Laurelin70]

Well, actually T. wrote it because the publisher of "The Hobbit" asked him a sequel. He wanted the Silmarillion (or what he had written until then about his world) to be published, but when he sent it to the publisher he immediately sent it back to him because it was "incomprehesible". So T. resigned himself to write a sequel to the Hobbit.

[@Dman9fp]

I mean... you can tell early on in FOTR it was going in that direction, at first..

[@user-vj2wt7jh7j]

I like your comment about the mood of writers not necessarilly being represented in their books. One of my favorite authors Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote novels with a large range of emotions although he had a relatively brutal life suffering from multiple health problems and almost being executed for reading books not favored by Czarist Russia instead spending 4 years in a Siberian prison. The Brothers Karamazov was a wonderful book with some humor and a lot of tragedy but showed a deep understanding of humanity and a wide range of sentiment.

[@hippojuice23]

He made private languages to communicate with Edith so, if read, his guardian priest couldn't figure out what they said- because he wasn't allowed to conspire her until he was of age!

[@AW-uv3cb]

Where did you read that? From what I remember from Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, he followed his guardian's order to not contact Edith till he's of age. Then, on the night he turned of age, he wrote her a letter asking for her hand in marriage. This story sounds extra dubious when you think of the fact that Edith was not a linguist herself - and if she were to understand the private language, he'd have to be able to teach her, which would mean them being able to interact closely enough to make that possible, which in turn would make the private language... unnecessary? I am going to look into Carpenter again to check if I haven't missed this detail - or maybe it concerns an earlier stage of their relationship, before the ban? - but I really don't remember anything like that.

[@hippojuice23]

@@AW-uv3cb ..and maybe I'M wrong. Been years since I read that, and my brain might've blended certian aspects together?

[@thomasbaader6629]

I have the German dubbed version of this documentary on VHS. So it was released as VHS too, at least in some countries.

[@55tranquility]

I mean Tolkien would have been 72 in 1964 and he died in 1973 - but hey, let's ignore that, he probably flew through basic training as a pensioner. Plus the UK was not involved in the Vietnam war, and what sort of person fights in WWI 1914-1918 and then again in the late 60s early 70s ??

[@pencilpauli9442]

Not sure the footage was from Vietnam. Looked like US WW2 troops in the Pacific Theatre. Sorry for the pedantry, but the footage of British and Indian soldiers shown earlier from WW2, probably North Africa So not Vietnam but also not from WW1 trenches either. Because public domain images/video of British troops in Flanders and Northern France just isn't available I guess.

[@rbvp45]

omg I'm traumatized by the dune footage

[@MountainFisher]

My son was heavy into playing games and he grew up, discovered girls liked him and took up a new hobby. Became a doctor and got rich.

[@lamontLR]

Okay, sorry for the pedantry, but, a coal biter is usually a kid who shows little promise, isn’t expected to amount to much, lazy, unmotivated, etc, etc. The meaning shifted over time, but the term mostly didn’t refer to the old. Hate to correct creators, but that M.A. in old Norse lang and lit was both useless and expensive. Can’t help but try to use it.

[@GeekFurious]

It's always fun when short-sighted people make "documentaries" to promote their short-sightedness as "fact."

[@dearthditch]

Can you turn the water into wine 🍷 tho?

[@TomMSTie1138]

There's a fun (and more accurate) three part documentary titled "Inside Tolkien's the Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers," etc. They're available right here on KZbin, and I would live to hear your thoughts on them. There is a "Inside Tolkien's the Hobbit" as well. And they're hosted by Graham McTavish.😁

[@hippojuice23]

....still better than Rankin Bass's Return of the King!

[@Extex_]

Rankin Bass' Return of the King was a masterpiece!

[@jacobitewiseman3696]

It was WW1 he fought not Vietnam. That was 5 decades before Vietnam.

[@entropytango5348]

I like your dry humour

[@apostlenik809]

How does one even come across the idea of calling a veteran of both world wars a happy man

[@eljanrimsa5843]

or a Catholic

[@petertorvik8413]

I want a Part-time Hobbit and Happy Hobbit channel meetup/collab. What do you say?

[@probablynotmyname8521]

What does “legally a documentary” mean? Are there legal requirements for documentaries?

[@peterang6912]

I think so, something about xx % must be facts...And where you can find those facts..

[@markpostgate2551]

There really ought to be. Given the readiness of audiences to believe documentaries and their self-portrayl as "educational" and "informative" making bibliography and footnotes available on request should be a legal obligation. You tube, really for all it's click baity dross that it contains as a whole, is actually better than mainstream TV channels because comments sections are a form of peer review. Make a false claim on a you tube video and if you have enough views there will be someone in the comments notifying your viewers that you are wrong (like the numerous comments here respectfully saying "that's not Vietnam; that's World War II" so despite getting something wrong this video does not misinform since the facility of rectification is built into the medium, which is not true of TV.

[@LittleLordFancyLad]

Although the Inklings weren't a "Christian group, Corin wasn't off base calling them a "group of Christians". They were. Although Tolkien hadn't converted CS Lewis yet, he certainly was no longer a hard nosed atheist at that point. At best mildly agnostic.

[@gordonmacdowell8117]

The scene of Tolkien using a shotgun as a bong in the Vietnam War was a bit gratuitous, but it did increase his street cred. kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXLWeKh9Zc5rfq8

[@finrod55]

Hilariously bad documentary. But my Tolkienophile friends in non-English speaking countries have told me about (and in one case shown me) Tolkien docs so spectacularly awful they just had to have been made on the spot by ignoramuses. The one I saw (30-ish yrs ago) was Korean, and it greatly ante-dated the Jackson films-it was from about 1980, after Bakshi. It wasn’t even about Tolkien, or the Bakshi debacle, but about an unauthorized (highly unauthorized!) Korean language version of LOTR that featured such scenes as Frodo putting on the Ring and zapping Sauron and the Nazgûl with its “power rays” until the villains were reduced to cinders. Sort of a Green Lanternification of the Ring, I guess. And there were other comical travesties. I can’t recall more, even though my memory otherwise reaches back to the Elder Days (ie before the Ballantine editions). That documentary’s upshot was actually more than a bit racist: that Koreans, by the innate superiority of their language, naturally improve any foreign book that they “translate.” My Korean friend had the book ar one time but when I visited him there was only the ridiculous doc to show me. And I’m told there’s a similarly outrageous doc made in India from around the same time. Just crazy.

[@hendrikm9569]

I seem to be unable to find this documentary, can someone share a link?

[@Jess_of_the_Shire]

Just added it to the description! It's the second item down

[@hendrikm9569]

@@Jess_of_the_Shire Thanks a lot.

[@billanderson1075]

The footage is World War II Pacific, not Vietnam.

[@aniruddhbhatkal1834]

I'm still at the start of the video. I wanted to say how much I like that medallion!

[@TurinInquisitor]

So it's like David Day's books.

[@MrRourk]

The Eagles dropped Napalm

[@llllllll1014]

Love your necklace

[@Nellyontheland]

Narm? NARRMM? You don't know man! You don't KNOW! ... Blanks out under a strange shadow of a nonexistent venetian blind! 🤔

[@lordtelion]

Shout out to trackie dog walker at 9:30

[@thedarkdane7]

🤣

[@jschap712]

LOL I wrote my last comment partway through the vid. It's obviously a production from Toronto. The Silver Snail is a classic comic shop from whence came Mark Askwith, co-creator of the legendary (I mean that with zero sarcasm) Prisoners of Gravity TV series (I'm sure the guys in the documentay appreciated the fact a psychiatrist was brought in just to call them losers), and Reel to Reel was actually a not awful cable access show on movies. It makes me wonder why they didn't, e.g., take advantage of Toronto's Judith Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy, a library focused solely on sf and fantasy content (probably the largest collection in the world), with lots of rare items including original art. I'm sure they'd have 1) found an expert there to talk to, 2) lots of source material, biographies, photos, etc, and 3) could have gotten some good visuals from items like the Tolkien illustrated The Road Goes Ever On Songbook in their collection. But, hey, they instead spent that time making a kick-ass Orc mask with the entire range of human expression after locating a couple of people to interview by watching Rogers Cable for a few hours.

[@andrewcurtis4568]

5:28 He eventually saw the light.

[@davidfinch7407]

OK, you correctly made fun of the documentary for using "Vietnam" footage to illustrate Tolkein's World War I experience, but you were also wrong: that footage clearly is from World War II, not Vietnam. You mentioned something about 'glass houses"?

[@57WillysCJ]

I was pretty sure that was footage from the Pacific Theater as the uniform was what my father wore. The uniform was different by Vietnam War as was the suspension harness.

[@mus3equal]

They definitely talk around the point

[@jakeoreilly9627]

Unwatchable. That said. Tolkien most certainly did not fight in Vietnam.