Tolkien and the DC Legends

[pendell]

As seen on the one ring.net (http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2017/03/19/102794-dc-legends-of-tomorrow-features-cameo-by-j-r-r-tolkien/)




On the upcoming episode of DC Legends of Tomorrow, airing this Tuesday, March 21 at 9:00 p.m. EST on The CW channel, the team goes back to France during WWI and enlists the help of, yes, J.R.R. Tolkien. The episode is titled “Fellowship of the Spear.” From IMDB: “The Legends land in France during World War I and enlist the aid of J.R.R. Tolkien to retrieve the last pieces of the Spear of Destiny from the Legion of Doom.”



Tolkien is being played by actor Jack Turner known, among other things, for his role as Liam in the Stitchers series and the movie The 10-Year Plan.


Jack Turner ...

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Jack-Turner.jpg

... well, darn. Edith Tolkien would be pleased with that, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[khadgar567]

Arson, murder and jaywalking in next episode. We have tolkein board waverider, ray gonna blurp the news that he readed lord of the rings to him and voila the f ing la he just created dreaded wizard focused universe nown as pungeons & paragons so( slow clap ) thank idiot

[Dienekes]

Arson, murder and jaywalking in next episode. We have tolkein board waverider, ray gonna blurp the news that he readed lord of the rings to him and voila the f ing la he just created dreaded wizard focused universe nown as pungeons & paragons so( slow clap ) thank idiot

I can almost tell what you're trying to say.

[Kato]

I can almost tell what you're trying to say.

It's a thing he does.

I wonder if I should watch this.. Though I'm kind of spoiled about "famous historical people in contemporary TV shows" because I saw "Vincent and the Doctor " and as an imbecile regarding art those bastards got me teared up.
I am somewhat curious, though..

[pendell]

In all fairness, I suspect khadgar567 does not speak English as his first language. For that matter, I am amazed at how seamlessly English works as a common language on this forum, given how many people are here from Japan, France, Germany and so forth.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lvl45DM!]

In all fairness, I suspect khadgar567 does not speak English as his first language. For that matter, I am amazed at how seamlessly English works as a common language on this forum, given how many people are here from Japan, France, Germany and so forth.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

What is this Japan you speak of?


Tolkien was part of the Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare with, among others, Ian Fleming and Christopher Lee. But I swear if they touch on LOTR in anyway I will stop watching mid-episode.

[warty goblin]

What is this Japan you speak of?


Tolkien was part of the Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare with, among others, Ian Fleming and Christopher Lee. But I swear if they touch on LOTR in anyway I will stop watching mid-episode.

That seems astonishingly unlikely, given that SOE was a World War II organization, and Tolkien fought in World War I.

I sort of don't get using WWI as a setting for super-powered hijinks. In part because it's a severe tonal mismatch. Tolkien arrived within days of the first day of the Somme, where 20,000 British soldiers were killed, the meatgrinder of Verdun was turning men into sausage in numbers that make the Somme seem like a sideshow, Brusilov's offensive on the Eastern Front was working its way towards 2 million casualties on all sides and battering the Russian army ever closer to its eventual disintegration and revolution the next year, and the Central powers were pushed ever closer to starvation. World War I makes Batman V. Superman look like Disney World, and seems an odd choice for super-heroics.

Also because I find something oddly annoying about a subtext that goes "millions of people are dying horribly, but what's important are a couple of totally made-up people doing absolute nonsense things." WWI does this to me in particular, but I had very much the same reaction to the first Captain America. Probably would have objected more, but the first Captain America was so dull I simply couldn't muster the effort.

(I'm not saying I object to any use of World War I/II as a setting for a story. Only ones that use them as backdrop for magical nonsense because, you know, thousands of eighteen year olds marching into machine guns sure makes a gripping context for super-punching!)

[Fri]

In all fairness, I suspect khadgar567 does not speak English as his first language. For that matter, I am amazed at how seamlessly English works as a common language on this forum, given how many people are here from Japan, France, Germany and so forth.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

That's just because in most non-english-speaking country, learning second language is common, and english is basically the least you could learn (so much that it's considered a basic need rather than advantage anymore in most part, you won't get much leverage with just ability to speak english besides your native language, if you want extra point you should learn third language here nowadays.

Anyway, my favourite story of author being secret agent is the author of the Master and Commander series of naval historical novel. He's a very reclusive person and basically almost nothing was known about his past, until relative later in his old days it's learned that apparently he used to be british secret agent in world war 2, but that's as much as anyone knew.

In fact, his stepson said that he's never a secret agent and just a boring ambulance driver, but isn't that what a secret agent's son would thought about his dad's job?

That's actually exactly the premise of later Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence novel series, where the two character did a lot of dangerous shenanigans in their youth, but their children never knew that and just scoffed any rumour that their parents was anything more than boring people.

[khadgar567]

for explanation about my messy writhing style i am born in turkey and still living there so English is my second language. and for my first post you have kinda scatter brained dimwits in same ship with major media producer and its kinda truth they gonna mess something pretty bad like commenting on his unwritten book and tell him its gonna be a Hollywood block buster and advise him to modify some characters to be better.
since lord of the rings is kinda idea father of dungeons & dragons they kinda responsible from the wreckage called 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of d&d so thanks you dimwits for breaking our games and creating this error filled game

[pendell]

for explanation about my messy writhing style i am born in turkey and still living there so English is my second language.


Understood. I'll do my best to bear with you. You've got good vocabulary but the sentence structure is difficult to follow at times.



and for my first post you have kinda scatter brained dimwits in same ship with major media producer and its kinda truth they gonna mess something pretty bad like commenting on his unwritten book and tell him its gonna be a Hollywood block buster and advise him to modify some characters to be better.


Yup. That's why Tolkien was so reticent to give out the movie rights to his work in the first place. Evidently someone showed him the screenplay to an adaptation Disney wanted to make and he didn't take it at all well :).




since lord of the rings is kinda idea father of dungeons & dragons they kinda responsible from the wreckage called 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of d&d so thanks you dimwits for breaking our games and creating this error filled game

I liked 3.5. 4 I agree is a trainwreck thanks to Hasbro -- but I'm not really a player so I'll defer to other people here. I gather SOMEONE liked DND 4, even if the market stuffed it so badly they had to hurry out 5.

As for DND 5, I haven't actually seen it enough to have an opinion.



(I'm not saying I object to any use of World War I/II as a setting for a story. Only ones that use them as backdrop for magical nonsense because, you know, thousands of eighteen year olds marching into machine guns sure makes a gripping context for super-punching!)


Actually "super powered hijinks" and magic artifacts were part of the comic book writers' arsenal during WWII. One of the problems they had to answer in-comic was: "If superman exists, why are we still fighting this war?"

The answer they came up with was: "Because Hitler has magic artifacts, that's why"

Citation (http://comicvine.gamespot.com/spear-of-longinus/4055-47001/)



Hitler at first tried to use the spear [of Destiny] to kill three American super heroes, but that plan was inverted by Dr. Fate and Hourman. The Spear of Destiny is a magical item, and combined with the power of Holy Grail they were used by Hitler during WWII to erect a barrier around axis territory, to keep super powered heroes, namely the JSA, from becoming involved in the war.


And I admit to a bit of a soft spot for First Squad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Squad)

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lacuna Caster]

What is this Japan you speak of?
...Fnord?


(I'm not saying I object to any use of World War I/II as a setting for a story. Only ones that use them as backdrop for magical nonsense because, you know, thousands of eighteen year olds marching into machine guns sure makes a gripping context for super-punching!)
The actual eighteen-year-olds at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America#Golden_Age) seemed quite happy to have people in spandex vicariously decking out Hitler. (The Cap America movie actually gets this backwards in a way, since winning over the troops was never a problem.)

[Dark_Jester]

This could either be brilliant or terrible. But I'm so far behind in the series it doesn't matter, I probably wont watch it anyway.

[thorgrim29]

It was pretty heavy-handed, they ripped off Aragorn's speech and a few things happened/were said that in-universe inspired Tolkien when he wrote the books (substitute the Spear of Destiny for the Ring), but they didn't go as far as when they had to save George Lucas so he could make Star Wars because like half the crew are huge nerds who would never have gotten into their fields without Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Pretty par for the course with the show TBH, we don't watch it because it's super good we watch it because it feels like somebody is filming the PCs of a really fun time-travel focused game of Fate or GURPS.

And they did treat the scale of the battle of the Somme with as much gravity as they do anything on that show.